AN INTERIM REPORT ON A PILOT CREDIT RECOVERY PROGRAM IN A LARGE, SUBURBAN MIDWESTERN HIGH SCHOOL.

GRADE repetition; SOCIAL promotion (Education); SUBURBAN high schools; UNITED States education system; HIGH school graduates; HIGH school dropouts; SECONDARY education research; COURSEWARE; SCHOOL credits; CURRICULUM; SOCIAL history; ECONOMIC history

OHIO; UNITED States

School policy regarding student failure of courses at the K-12 level generally focuses on grade retention or social promotion, neither of which addresses the students' needs. Grade retention has never been effective in helping students gain mastery of course objectives. To reduce the numbers of social promotions, many states require 8th graders to earn a passing score on state-mandated standardized tests. If students do not earn the required score, they are not allowed to matriculate to the next grade, regardless of their teacher-assigned course grades (Ezarik, 2003). A relatively unique approach to help students who have failed one or more courses at the high school level is a credit recovery program. Though details of such programs vary from district to district, the one unifying aspect for any credit recovery program is the opportunity for students to earn credit for a course failed. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot credit recovery program implemented in a large suburban high school in the Midwest. Historical, longitudinal student data revealed that freshmen who fail at least one course are four times more likely to fail to graduate in four years (R. Hankey, personal communication, July, 2009). With this is mind, the school developed a pilot credit recovery program for freshmen who had failed at least one course; online and traditional curricula were provided. The short-term goal was to provide an opportunity for freshmen to recover credits lost due to failure; the long-term goal was to reduce the dropout rate for freshmen who had failed at least one course, and consequently contribute to a higher graduation rate for the freshman class. This paper presents the results of the first cohort of students who completed the pilot program after their freshman year and who have now completed their second year of high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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