New measures keep kids focused on earning their diploma

by Wendy Harris and Peak Johnson

As part of the effort to keep students on track to graduation, the School District – even before the unveiling of the strategic plan "Imagine 2014" – developed several new initiatives this year for use in high schools.

The tools are primarily designed to intervene early with struggling students and help them plan ahead. Among them:

• An online credit recovery program, piloted in West Philadelphia High School. Students can work at their own pace online, in and out of school, to make up coursework that they failed.
• Meetings between nearly 1,500 repeating ninth graders and their guidance counselors to identify the reasons they are struggling and develop plans for getting back on track. There are 2,300 repeating ninth graders in all.
• An online graduation planning tool for students in grades 9-12 so they can keep track of the courses they have taken and the courses they need to graduate. The tool is under development by the Office of High School Reform, Policy, and Research.

 “As we start to focus on the overage and repeating ninth grader situation in our District, it’s not acceptable for us to allow these young people to just fail the ninth grade or to be in the ninth grade for a second or third year,” said Courtney Collins-Shapiro, the District’s Director of Multiple Pathways to Graduation.

Collins-Shapiro said that while none of the initiatives by themselves is thought to be a “silver bullet” to improving the graduation rate, each are necessary strategies to making a dent in the dropout rate. 

Credit recovery
One of the stumbling blocks to graduation is insufficient credits. Students can now retake classes through a new online credit recovery system available at their high school, home, the library, neighborhood recreation center, or anywhere they have access to a computer.

To get started, students must first consult their roster chair to identify which classes they need to retake. Then using a log-on issued by the school, they can access a provider platform to obtain the class materials. Collins-Shapiro said, depending on the school, students can use either Apex Learning or NovaNet. All content is aligned with state standards, so if a student fails Algebra I, for example, he or she would go into the platform, find the online course that meets Algebra I standards for the state of Pennsylvania, and then test his current knowledge of the content by taking an exam before completing the course. 

“It’s mastery-based, so it gives them credit for things they know and helps them focus on things they don’t know,” said Collins-Shapiro.

Each course has eight to 12 exams and students test through the material until they achieve mastery of all the content. Students have to achieve 80 percent mastery or above to earn credit in the system, and all exams must be taken at school.

The District rolled out the system to its comprehensive high schools earlier this year, with West Philadelphia being the first to use it.