Giving Compass' Take:

• A new report's findings caution schools against enrolling students in credit recovery programs that are not accountable for producing academic achievement. 

• Experts and researchers not only suggest policy changes surrounding credit recovery programs but stronger enforcement from the schools. However, how can schools address the root causes that land so many students on the brink of failure that they need these programs to graduate? 

• Read more about whether or not credit recovery programs are helping or hurting students. 

It was a good news story gone horribly wrong. Located in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., Ballou High School was lauded in 2017 for rapidly improving its graduation rate. For the first time, every senior who graduated from the school was accepted to college.

Then, the investigations hit. In January, Washington’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education found that about two-thirds of Ballou seniors who were awarded diplomas hadn’t earned them. Among the policy violations driving the graduation spike was the inappropriate use of credit recovery courses, which are designed to give students a second chance to pass required coursework. ut many students at Ballou, investigators found, enrolled in credit recovery even before they failed the original course.

In a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, researchers point to the D.C. scandal as an example of how credit recovery programs can go wrong. With a skeptical eye on the courses — in particular, the computer-based variety — the report found credit recovery is widespread, with schools that serve the country’s most at-risk youth relying on it the most.

About 69 percent of high schools nationwide reported enrolling at least one student in them during the 2015-16 school year, according to the report. Of those schools, more than 8 percent of students were enrolled in at least one credit recovery course.

“While some of these programs might be really good, we know that some of the online programs, anecdotally, are really bad,” said Adam Tyner, Fordham’s associate director of research and a co-author of the report. Because the report found a large share of students in credit recovery, he said, “it seems like a lot of students are getting exposed to potentially low-quality coursework.”

Read the full article about credit recovery programs by Mark Keierleber at The 74