Effectiveness of Online Credit Recovery Programs

Researchers from the American Institutes for Research have received a $3.26-million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education which will allow them to study the effectiveness of online academic credit recovery programs — the kind that allow students to make up failed classes and graduate on time — in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The researchers will study how online makeup courses for Algebra 1 and ninth-grade English compare with retaking the class in person. Researchers will investigate how online credit recovery affects student content knowledge, credit accumulation, and graduation, relative to retaking failed courses in a standard face-to-face format. They will also describe the ways in which online credit recovery provides students with different instructional experiences compared to repeating the standard face-to-face (f2f) course.

Heppen, J. (2017). Assessing the efficacy of online credit recovery on student learning and high school graduation. Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research. https://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/details.asp?ID=2025