[MUSIC] >> Welcome to Education in Focus. I'm your host, Eliana Kernodel. Nearly two out of three Detroit high school students did not complete selected online credit recovery courses the year after COVID-19. Joining me to discuss this is chalkboard news editor Brendan Clary. Brendan, we've talked a lot about online credit recovery courses. And you took a look at some data from Detroit area schools. What did you find? >> Yeah, essentially, what I was looking for is how many students took these courses, how many students completed these courses, what kind of grade did they get, how long to take them to do the courses. And essentially what I found was that out of the first year after the pandemic where students were back in class for the most part, there was still some virtual learning, I believe that was going on in that 2021-2022 school year, different cases like maybe if teachers were out sick. I think there was a big back to school push, but there are still, I think, some cases like that where you had different groups saying we need to not go in until it's safe. We need to hold things out. But essentially, I was looking at how long did I take students to do the courses. Because as we've talked about before, courseware provider recommends that the students take about 80 hours for a semester-long course or a year-long course. But essentially, the students going through it much faster than that, and that is what I found is that year that, you know, the average act of time for these courses was between four hours and 12 hours for the 2021-2022 school year. And that does include students who didn't complete it at all, so that is going to definitely cut into that average time, that's a reason why it's lower, because you stop doing it, you don't finish it, so why would you keep going. So that really brings down the time. But even the one that had the highest amount of completion, 88%, is 7 out of 8 students completed it, that took students about 7 hours to do. So it does show, like, you know, if the recommended amount of time is 80 hours, you know, and students are doing it in about 7 hours, it's a much smaller, like, amount of time than what the courseware provider recommends. So this is a very interesting look at how long does it actually take students to do this. But the other side of that is how many students are actually finishing the course. And so one thing to point out about this virtual credit recovery is that it is an option that is given to students who've already failed a course. Like, that's what the Detroit Public School Community District says, is that this is for students who've already, you know, have not been able to complete a course for whatever reason, you know, and my thought is with the 2021-2022 school year, this is the year after the pandemic, right, when kids were sent home, when schools were scrambling and shuffling. And again, this is kind of anecdotal, but this is what we know, know, know happened, right, is that a lot of school districts, they sent kids home and then they had to try to figure out the technology differences and then they're trying to run classrooms remotely. And kids didn't learn as well, and we do know that from the data, right, we know that from a lot of the test scores, a lot of the different kinds of measurements that exist in the education landscape that students lost a lot of learning during those school closures related to COVID-19. And so I think that you can kind of clearly see how that wouldn't make sense that kids who needed the most help, we're actually not getting it. And that's what has kind of stood out to me and sent some of these, especially in that year's data from the Detroit Public School Community District, is essentially what researchers have told me about credit recovery programs, that it doesn't help the students who need the most help, right? So if you have already failed a course, let's say, Algebra I, and you didn't do a great job on it, instead of sending you back into the course and giving you maybe remedial information about math and helping you really get the material down and putting you in the next year, again, and holding you back essentially and saying, no, you need to take Algebra I want to get in class with a real teacher, it's saying, okay, you can have a virtual teacher, and I mean, who is real, but maybe is overseeing 60 or 80 students, right, and sort of just monitoring your progress from afar, and you're given this coursework that's not as challenging, that's something that researchers have pointed out, it's not as challenging, maybe it doesn't have the right kind of question bank. So there are these kind of, these are concerns are raised regarding, you know, these kinds of virtual courses, and specifically these credit recovery courses for students who've already failed, and what researchers have said is that it's inequitable, right, there are these students who need the most help, and they're not getting the attention that they need because it's cheaper, it's easier for school districts to put students into these classes, they can have a larger class size, and it's more flexible, right, you don't have to have another student jumping into an Algebra I class when you have an incoming class of, you know, 200 kids need to have Algebra, right, so how do you kind of figure that out if you have kids who were left over from the last year, so how do you puzzle that? So this is a way for them to do that quite cheaply, but I think you sort of run, you start running the risk of, you know, what we saw in this data that I, for these select courses, so that does include an Algebra I course at these different high schools in the first semester, that also includes some English language arts courses at the 11th and 12th grade, again, first semester, and then probability and statistics, right, so these are just like a sample of courses, this is not all of the virtual cut or recovery courses, because that would be, that'd be a lot, and so this is just sort of a sample of that, and some of these actually too were from a TikTok, so I got the specific number of the course, and I was able to request that because TikTok user was, had that posted, so there's just kind of an aside there, I had posted it and said, I'm doing this course work, let me know if you need homework help, like I'll do your virtual credit recovery classes for you essentially, so that's kind of a reason why we wanted to see that too, is how fast it takes students to do that, and so you can kind of see too how this is maybe a good gig for somebody who is doing these classes for other people, and I reached out to the Detroit Public School Community District, and I said, you know, what are you doing to prevent this kind of cheating from happening, and they never got back to me. And so how do these like completion numbers compare from year to year since the pandemic? So yeah, in 2020, three to 2024, and in the years since that 2021, 2022 school year, you can see that the completion rates were better, and I think part of that too is that you had fewer students taking these credit recovery options, at least in these selected courses that I requested, right? So in 2021, 2022, there was 225 students, and again, part of this could be related to the COVID-19 pandemic, that there were school closures, that there were more people who maybe failed the course, because they didn't get it right the first time. And then in 2023, 2024, there was only 134 students in these select classes that I requested, and the completion rate was much higher, so I think on average completion rate, percentage on average was 83% completion, and again, that kind of skews depending on the class size, and in some cases, you did have a class size of maybe two students, and so if both of them got it, then it'd be 100% completion. So that kind of maybe brings up the average a little bit more, but in 2021, 2022, there was a much lower rate, the average there was about 50% in terms of those class sizes, and then how many of them actually finished the course, right? And the grades too, I think, they also came up in that time. So it is an interesting thing to look at over time, and we have access to that information because of the public records request that we filed with the Detroit Public School Community District. Yeah, and it is interesting, there's not entirely a way of knowing did those completion rates and grades get better, because the students are doing better, or is it that these cheating platforms are becoming more popular and more available, and we just don't necessarily know all of the factors going into this, there's so many things at play. Absolutely. Well, Brendan, thank you for your insights on this story, listeners can keep up with this story and more at chalkboardnews.com. [MUSIC]
