Support NeoGAF

[Piecake]

High school science teacher Jeremy Noonan will never forget his training as an online credit recovery teacher in Douglas County, Ga. He was told to always give answer checks. When a student finished an online quiz or test, he was to pull up the results on his own screen, tell the student which questions were answered incorrectly and instruct them to try again.

That was only one of the dubious shortcuts Noonan witnessed while teaching credit recovery, an approach to raising graduation rates that is spreading everywhere. Many educators think corrupt credit recovery courses are a reason graduation rates have been going up. Noonan said the graduation rate in his district went up 13 percentage points in 2015, “despite no meaningful gains in student achievement.”

Noonan’s findings align with a new investigation of alternative high schools in USA Today, written by Heather Vogell and Hannah Fresques of the ProPublica nonprofit newsroom. They show how public schools for failing students, in Florida often run by for-profit charter networks, help high schools rid themselves of difficult students and raise the schools’ ranks on state assessments. Alternative schools often use online credit recovery and get poor results.

I have yet to find a school district that has data to show its credit recovery classes improve learning and help students achieve the mastery they failed to get the first time they took a course. Because graduation rates are such a popular measure of school quality, and credit recovery such a cheap way to raise those percentages, districts cannot be trusted to shake their addiction.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.5810fc03d23b

I look forward to even more of this fuckery under DeVos. And yes, the title of the article does suck

 

[HooYaH]

I used GameShark back in the days.

 

[LinkSlayer64]

"Did cheats in a video game ever help you enjoy a game more?" - no, but they helped improve my real life.

 

[Sectorseven]

Konami code has gone too far.

 

[watershed]

What game is this?

But honestly, credit recovery is all about graduation rates and getting students their diploma. Of course the quality of teaching and learning is worse than in a traditional classroom, its unavoidable in the current structure.

 

[jello44]

Konami code has gone too far.

It gave me 30 lives, but I wasted all of them.

 

[1upsuper]

"They show how public schools for failing students, in Florida often run by for-profit charter networks, help high schools rid themselves of difficult students and raise the schools’ ranks on state assessments."

This is so gross. Nevermind educating students who need more help or guidance. Just slip them right through those cracks with a *hard-earned* diploma.

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Cheatcodecentral is where I always went.

 

[Nights Owl]

Action Replay in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle with the "Change Gravity" cheat was pretty cool. I learned physics real fast from that.

 

[Killerhertz]

I went to gamesages and was blacklisted by the FBI and couldn't use a computer til I turned 18

 

[Piecake]

Woops

 

[Deadpool_X]

So, wait...if kids cheat their way through high school, they're more likely to have the grades to graduate? Hmm...who'd have thunk it...

 

[Trojita]

This is water is wet.

They covered something similar on King of the Hill when Principal Moss put Bobby and the rest of the "troubled" kids in the Special Education classes to boost the overall test scores of the school.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Juking the stats.

So Lieutenants become Majors and Majors become Colonels.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

It's been this way for a while, this is basically all summer school is. You fail, you go to summer school for 3 hours a day during summer, do bull shit nothing assignments and get your credits anyway.

 

[Jarate]

This is what happens when you try to standardize education towards meaningless exams and grades. Grades are meaningless, students should be judged on growth

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Credit recover is one of the main reason why kids are so apathetic in my classes, they know it doesn't matter. Fail, np man I'll do an Edgenuity credit recovery course that has to be given to me or I'll take credit recovery in SS and do jack shit. I loathe it.

It's been this way for a while, this is basically all summer school is. You fail, you go to summer school for 3 hours a day during summer, do bull shit nothing assignments and get your credits anyway.

100%

 

[Grizzlyjin]

I remember one of those "alternative" high schools when I was in school. And yeah, it was basically where the school district seemed to ship off problem students or students who had circumstances that would make it hard for them to graduate normally (preganancy, rehab visits, etc).

We also had a program in the basement of our high school that let you make up courses you failed, but at an accelerated pace. It was mainly for seniors who couldn't fit all the courses they needed to graduate into their schedule. I actually took a speech class that way cause the class filled up. I finished the entire year's worth of material in less than 2 weeks and then had a free period for the rest of the semester.

 

[Socivol]

This is so real. In the district I taught in they are being sued for taking kids out of their regular courses if they were on track to fail the accountability test and putting them in credit recovery. These are often just quizzes the students take but they don't provide any meaningful instruction. I taught an intervention course using one of these programs but it wasn't for credit recovery. I also would teach the material before the students got on the computer and work with individual students that didn't master the lesson materials. The way most credit recovery programs are set it it's not about actually teaching anything but just getting by the say the student can graduate. It's really disgusting.

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

The way most credit recovery programs are set it it's not about actually teaching anything but just getting by the say the student can graduate. It's really disgusting.

Yep, that is the way it works at my school. It turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, teachers feel immense pressure (we now have to fill out a failure report every six weeks documenting the % in each class) students give up as soon as they hit anything that is remotely difficult or not interesting, they get pulled out of an elective class and sent to CR, and then the cycle repeats.

Secondary education isn't what I thought it was and this is only my second year. I left adjuncting because I didn't feel like I was making a difference (plus it was a major drain) only to find out this is much worse.

 

[Violence Jack]