Credit Recovery Software: The New Summer School: Districts Are Using Online Programs to Get At-Risk Students Back on Track to Graduation

DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS online High School numbers 150 full-time students who, for a variety of reasons, find the traditional classroom-bound education doesn't meet all their needs. Some of them use the online option as a means of learning at their own pace, or getting an education while carrying a job. Some just prefer the approach to the standard classroom structure. In addition to the full-time students, the school's enrollment includes many kids who have had academic setbacks and are using the virtual environment as a way to catch up. We have a number of students who have failed a class and need to get back on track, says Mike Clem, lead teacher, adviser, and social studies instructor for DPS Online. online school offers them that chance through its course-credit recovery program, using software from Aventa Learning (www.aventalearning.com) that supplies users with a catalog of classes, from core subjects to electives and advanced placement. technology allows students to retake courses they failed previously while staying active in their current classes, helping them stay on track academically. coursework can be done on a home computer or on one stationed in a school lab. Clem says that DPS Online offers its credit recovery program to any interested school in the district. Usually it's during the second semester, when students are more serious about graduating and school counselors are running out of other options, that we see a significant increase in student enrollments, he says. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] push for a high graduation rate--always a symbol of academic excellence but now carrying even greater value as a measure of accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act--has districts looking for any way to help turn around or even bring back students whose poor academic performance is driving them--or already has driven them--to drop out of school. Denver Public Schools is one of many districts that are using online learning as an alternative approach to the conventional course recovery system: summer school. After all, a student who didn't pass a class during the school year is no more likely to pass it in the summer, working essentially in the same learning environment. Online learning's use of video and the internet as means of delivering academic content, says Carol Downing, credit retrieval specialist at the Volusia County School District in Florida, is key to getting more students to comprehend subject matter they didn't grasp the first time around. Downing says that providing the content via digital media enables students to pace themselves and become masters of their own success....[It] empowers them to learn, which some students truly didn't think they could do before. idea of putting in the work and passing is not a causal relationship with them. Those attitudes began to change, Downing adds, through the virtual course-taking. Students caught up in their classes and grew anxious to move forward. They very quickly started nipping at our heels, she says. Volusia County offers more than 30 credit retrieval programs, from its regular high schools to high schools aimed at part-time learners, such as teen parents or working students, and programs in the county juvenile detention centers. district uses a system from Apex Learning (www.apexlearning.com); coursework can be completed entirely through the software, or the technology can be used as a supplement to textbook teaching. But regardless, the course content doesn't change no matter the location of the user's computer, which helps ease the transition to one learning environment from another. The beauty of the system is that any course not finished in the juvenile detention program, for example, can be finished at the high school with the same system, Downing says. It's welcoming to the student. storefront schools offer the same curriculum as the traditional high schools, but without the time constraints. …