How Making the Graduation Rate into a School Performance Measure Undermined Teaching and Learning:
Descriptions, Analysis, Accounts
Erich
Martel
June 2017
Zoe Kirsch, The
New Diploma Mills, Slate
5/23/2017 (one of a series of Slate exposes)
Rushing
to boost graduation rates, more school districts are relying on
“online credit recovery”—a form of instruction that may be
selling students short. https://tinyurl.com/kmwknrf
(many links)
Thomas Ultican, Credit
Recovery Scam Generates Spectacular Graduation Rates (blog post),
6/8/17
Ultican is a math and
physics teacher in California. This article contains lots of links
to related studies of credit recovery. https://tinyurl.com/ycxsqz83
Erich Martel, "'A'
for effort shouldn't count" in Education Gadfly
(Fordham Institute e-journal) 9/16/2010
This describes Michelle
Rhee's introduction of credit recovery to the Washington, D.C. Public
Schools in 2008 and greatly expanded in 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/l8cjxac
Andrew
Brownstein, Course Credits on the
Quick: Controversial online recovery programs speed the path to
graduation
in the Harvard
Education Letter.
March/April 2012
He describes credit recovery in D.C.'s Anacostia
High School.
https://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/28_2/helarticle/course-credits-on-the-quick_525
Jay Mathews, Teacher
assails practice of giving passing grades to failing students,
Washington Post, 5/17/2015
Describes
math teacher Caleb Rossiter's book, Ain't
Nobody Be Learnin' Nothin': the Fraud and Fix for High Poverty
Schools,
New
York: Algora, 2015.
Rossiter describes his experience with credit
recovery in DC's Woodson High School and his public resignation from
Friendship Tech Prep Charter School when he was pressured to raise
failing Algebra grades. https://tinyurl.com/n5rctb3
(many links)
Rob Barnett, A D.C.
Teacher's Bold Vision to Improve Scandalously Poor Student
Performance:
Fixated on graduation rates, schools focus on
passing students so they can boost numbers. Real learning has become
a secondary goal. Washington City Paper, 5/18/2017
https://tinyurl.com/ya6z942e