Since 2012, any high school student in a St. Vrain Valley school who has failed a core subject course has the opportunity to recover the credit to be able to graduate.
The eCredit Recovery Program, a hybrid learning initiative that allows students to recover math, social studies and English credits by retaking only the concepts in which they were previously unsuccessful, currently has 720 students enrolled, according to Kerri McDermid, SVVSD chief communications and global impact officer, and has seen great success over the past few months.
The program saw an overall summer school completion rate of 89%, with 455 students enrolled, and supported 64 senior students, 48 of which were able to graduate with their class in 2020, per data shared by McDermid.
This fall, the program is starting off completely online for seven SVVSD high schools, with weekly group and one-one one student and teacher meetings.
“These opportunities are designed to meet the needs of students in different situations,” said Ashlie Swanson, SVVSD e-learning coordinator, adding that the program provides opportunities for students to take classes during the school day or after school.
“The teachers at each school provide content support and collaborate with each student, family, and school support team to ensure students have every opportunity to recover the required courses for graduation,” she said.
In general, e-credit recovery has been a controversial issue that raises questions about the effectiveness and quality of knowledge acquisition in pursuit of diplomas, specifically when priority is given to graduation numbers.
However, there is a case to be made for how e-learning strategies and credit recovery programs can help narrow the opportunity gap among at-risk students. The “economic impacts of the failure of students to gain a high school diploma are significant at both individual and societal levels,” and the flexible, self-paced and individualized nature of e-credit recovery programs provide benefits and value for both students and the schools serving them, according to the North American Council for Online Learning.
As an eCredit teacher in a small-group environment seeing a 15-to-1 ratio of students to teachers, Beth Lee, a seasoned eCredit teacher who was involved in the selection committee for the current credit recovery program, has seen the benefits of SVVSD's strategy.
“It really is a nice program. (The curriculum) has been vetted by teachers. … We really had to look through to make sure that it was rigorous enough but it had things to help students who struggle,” she said. “It has a lot of tools that our students can use to access the materials. … They get a lot more individual attention, and we can teach skills to study and take notes.”
Having struggled through high school herself, Lee said she understands the need for options to support students’ individual needs.
“I was that student in high school, and having the ability to have a second chance helps me connect with the kids,” she said. “(The program) helps boost their confidence because some of them don't have a lot of confidence in themselves.
The program is a great way to support students who struggle for a variety of reasons that impact their ability to pass a course, Lee said.
“They are pretested to account for what they already know and show mastery of what they already know from the content,” she said. “The self-paced part of it, that they can go faster if they want, is appealing to students in high school who have jobs or are taking additional regular courses.”
The e-learning team provides the platform, registration, teacher recruitment and training and support to school teams to make the program successful, Swanson said.
“Every student walking across the stage at graduation and receiving their diploma is something we are striving for, and eCredit is an intervention that supports our work towards that goal,” she said. “We could not ask for better educators to partner with us in building a generation of problem solvers and supporting students towards the goal of graduation.”
