Credit Recovery Shouldn't Be a Joke
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why credit recovery programs that are significantly easier than the original course undermine the value of a diploma.
Key Takeaways
- Credit recovery is often too easy - Many programs allow students to earn equivalent credit through dramatically less rigorous work
- This devalues everyone's diploma - When credit recovery requires a fraction of the effort, it undermines the achievement of students who completed the course
- Equivalent credit should mean equivalent learning - If students are going to get the same credit, they should demonstrate the same level of mastery
Transcript
Credit recovery and makeup work need to not be much easier and much faster to get through than the original classes and the original work that the student didn't do.
Because if we have these options for still getting credit, still moving on academically, that are much less work and much less learning, of course kids are going to take them.
We're incentivizing kids to pursue educational paths that will teach them much, much less.
And I think a lot of people who have looked at the credit recovery work or the makeup work that kids do in order to pass, in order to get their credit, it's not really a replacement for what they missed the first time around.
They might do it over the summer, they might do it on a Saturday, they might do it all at the end of the semester.
I saw even in one case, some DC schools are dual enrolling kids in a regular class and then a matching credit recovery class so that if they don't pass the actual class, they can still get the credit from the credit recovery class.
Like, this just seems ridiculous to me that we would be counting learning that is not equivalent, right?
Like, The learning should be equivalent.
The work should be equivalent.
If we're going to give credit, there shouldn't be an easy out that fails to deliver the same amount of learning.
Because that's what this is all about, right?
Like we have all these discussions about alternatives for students.
And if they don't result in learning, how are they legit alternatives?
Like this just seems wrong to me to let students...
you know, make up their work in a way that is not really making up their work.
So am I crazy on this?
Let me know what you think.
I feel like we're just creating these massive incentives and predictably students are taking the easy way out, right?
Like if you could do nothing all semester and then do a quick online class in the summer to make up for it, a lot of kids are going to be tempted by that.
We have to not close our eyes to just the incentives and the rational behavior.
In a lot of these cases, it's rational for the kid to do the thing that's worse for them.
And it's our job as adults to set up systems of incentives and rules and consequences and policies and procedures where kids have a rational incentive to do the thing that is best for them.
Let me know what you think.