Credit Recovery Hits the Mainstream.

New Orleans teenager Victoria McKnight bounced between three high schools before finding the right fit. One of the schools was too large and impersonal; the second closed long before McKnight had earned enough credits to graduate, so school officials encouraged her to transfer to the third school, NET Charter High School, which, as part of its curriculum, offers online classes to students who have fallen behind. Without the NET, McKnight, 18, doubts she would have ever earned a high school diploma; now she is on pace to do so in 2014. McKnight says the computer-based courses allow her to work at her own speed and more easily avoid the distractions of classmates. But there are drawbacks, particularly when she is struggling to learn a new concept. of the lessons really don't understand and some do, she says. I would rather take it with a regular teacher because it would be more hands-on and you could ask questions. computer lab does have a full-time teacher, but students say it's sometimes hard for him to respond to questions on a variety of subjects. As online education grows in reach and sophistication, students like McKnight who are behind in credits are being pushed toward online credit-recovery programs. In communities including New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago, educators are creating alternative schools for struggling students that employ online credit-recovery programs as a core portion, or all, of their curriculum. most recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found that 55 percent of school districts reported using distance learning, most of it online, during the 2009-10 school year; more than 60 percent of those classes were taken for credit recovery. Meanwhile, about 80 percent of urban schools cite credit recovery as an issue of importance, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. NCES does not compile enrollment figures, but major online credit-recovery providers report surging enrollments. Arizona-based Edgenuity, for instance, serves about 1 million students annually, up 100 percent from two years ago. Although the company offers more than online credit recovery, a majority of its customers take its online courses for that purpose. Most companies selling online credit-recovery courses offer a host of online programs and classes, and few track what portion of their product is used for credit recovery. As a result, there are no concrete national data on how many students take online credit-recovery courses. Even as online credit recovery hits the mainstream, for the most part it has remained free of any scrutiny beyond what individual school leaders and the consumer marketplace provide. Of course, the entire field of education, credit recovery or not, struggles with what makes a class or teacher good, great, or below par. In traditional education, however, there's a nationwide war raging over accountability, with many states seeking ways to rate not only teachers and schools, but also teacher preparation and early childhood programs, based on quantifiable outcomes. With the exception of isolated pockets, like the Florida Virtual School (where funding of some online courses will soon be tied to passing an external exam), the conversation about accountability for online credit recovery has not been nearly as robust and far-reaching, in either a political or a pragmatic sense. Where there is nascent accountability for the quality of courses, it's often a byproduct of the push for accountability in traditional education. Some states, for instance, are creating end-of-course exams aimed in part at assessing the efficacy of individual courses, whether traditional or online. But these are hardly universal and come nowhere close to covering the range and variety of courses offered by online providers. Edgenuity, for example, sells about 185 semester-length classes. The field really struggles with the question of what makes a good or great online credit-recovery program, explains Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. …