The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) is committed to providing guidance and support for high school faculty, staff, and administrators to ensure clear pathways to graduation. Many high school students face challenges in accrual and recovery of credit towards graduation. Class offerings, credit calculation, and course…

Online credit recovery (OCR) allows US students at risk of dropping out of school to retake courses to meet graduation requirements and eventually graduate from high school. The problem addressed in this study is that despite participating in online English II credit recovery (ELA II OCR), students in a rural school district in North Florida still…

This article examines the equivalency of virtual credit recovery (VCR) programs as a viable alternative to earning back failed credits needed to graduate on time. Utilization of interviews and questionnaires assisted with collecting perspective data of 10 teachers facilitating the VCR program. Artifact analysis provided a third source of numeric…

Credit recovery in public education has become an intervention used widely in the United States to address the rising number of students who are not meeting with success in the completion of required courses in the traditional education setting. With the passing of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, public schools sought a method to motivate…

Many high schools use online courses to allow students to retake failed classes in an effort to help get students back on track and graduate. However, there is limited evidence available on the effectiveness of online credit recovery in improving students' long-term outcomes compared with traditional face-to-face credit recovery courses. In this…

The majority of American high school students enrolling in online education are doing so in credit recovery courses. These are online courses specifically for students who previously failed a face-to-face version of the course. Despite the popularity of credit recovery courses, the literature on online learning largely ignores credit recovery…

Algebra has often been called a "gateway" course because student performance in Algebra has often been an indicator of performance in future math courses of graduation rates. High school stake-holders have placed high priority on improving the passing rates in Algebra I and have attempted solutions such as introduction of algebraic…

This article introduces credit recovery (CR) programs to school counseling. Traditionally the school counselors' role in CR has been limited to referring students who are, or who have, failed courses. Based on our own findings from a study of a large Midwest high school (N = 2,000) CR program, we make specific recommendations for school counselors…

WestEd is undertaking a multiyear series of implementation studies intended to inform the California State University (CSU) system about the implementation of Executive Order 1110 (EO 1110). A major policy adopted by the CSU Chancellor's Office in 2017, EO 1110 requires CSU campuses to eliminate non-credit developmental courses in Written…

This qualitative study investigated how educators in urban second-chance high school settings made sense of their work with formerly disconnected youth. Using Duncan-Andrade's framework of critical hope, we examined how adults' orientations toward hope shaped the educational context in ways that were necessary and sufficient for student success.…

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) offered several academic summer programs to students June through August 2021. These programs offered students opportunities to accelerate their learning, recover academic course credits, and support grade level transition. Although AISD offered a variety of summer programs in 2021, this report focuses…

In 2018, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) developed an indicator for being "on track" at the end of a high school student's freshman year. As part of the district's overall strategy for improving graduation rates, school administrators currently use the Ninth Grade On-Track indicator as an early marker of progress towards…

Stakeholders have long been concerned about high school drop-out rates and associated achievement gaps between groups, specifically racial, of high school students. While significant improvements have been made to these drop-out rates at the national level, the largest group of drop-out students continues to be those of Hispanic heritage. Research…

This report includes findings regarding demographic characteristics and academic outcomes of Twilight program students; highlights emerging topics from the student, teacher, and staff surveys; and provides recommendations for future program implementation.

The report takes an in-depth look at the progress that was made between 2011 and 2016 in raising high school graduation rates and the state and district sources of those improvements, and identify where challenges remain. It also links improvements in high school graduation rates to the need to ensure that all students, including those…