K12 Schools Must Fill Need For Digital Media Skills
There is a new urgency to teach digital media literacy as a study finds students are taking online information for granted
Florida Virtual High School teachers undergo quarterly, face-to-face training sessions to brush up on their teaching skills.
When students fail courses or drop out of school, it isn’t good for them or their districts, which are under federal and state mandates to improve test scores and graduation rates. With those mandates and about 1.2 million students dropping out each year—or one every 26 seconds—“there is more pressure today than ever to help students stay in school and graduate on time,” according to Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.
Nationwide, nearly one-third of high school students fail to graduate with a diploma, with an average of 7,000 dropping out every day. The problem is even more severe among African-American and Hispanic students, with nearly 50 percent not completing high school on time. Overall, in the nation’s 50 largest cities, only 53 percent of high school students graduate on time, according to Cities in Crisis 2009: Closing the Graduation Gap, a report issued this year by America’s Promise Alliance, a nonprofit founded in 1997 by Gen. Colin Powell and his wife, Alma Powell. Driven by government requirements to produce better results, more districts are using credit recovery programs to help students in trouble get back on track and boost achievement levels for the students and districts alike.
While some districts rely on traditional face-to-face interaction between teachers and students, many are adopting online solutions offered by commercial vendors, and others are implementing programs that blend face-to-face and online instruction. Some create their own programs from free online resources and their own curricula. In some states, education agencies and virtual schools provide complete programs.
However districts do it, the objective is the same: to give students who have failed courses because of poor grades or absenteeism, or who have dropped out of school, a chance to recover the credits they have lost so that they can move on to the next grade and ultimately to graduation.
Whatever credit recovery models districts use, education authorities agree that teachers play key roles. “Having an instructor on hand to help if the student is not understanding something is vital,” asserts Patrick. But “on hand” means different things in different models.
Face-to-Face
Although it has an online component, the credit recovery program in the Jackson (Mich.) Public Schools is based largely on personal classroom interaction between teachers and students. It’s the best way to help students who have “burned a lot of bridges” through academic failure, absenteeism, and disciplinary issues in and out of school, says Superintendent Daniel Evans.
“We’re working now with a girl who has been expelled from school three times, going back to seventh grade, and has been in and out of juvenile homes. The local court is asking us what we can do for her,” Evans says.
She and other students who need credit recovery participate in SAFE (Student Alternative for Expulsion), a program the district operates Monday through Thursday after regular school hours, from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in its Alternative High School. Two days are devoted to English and two to math. On both kinds of days, students spend half the time face-to-face with certified regular classroom teachers, who drill them on the basics of the courses they must pass, sometimes using textbooks and other printed materials, including novels for reading instruction. After a half-hour break for exercise in the school gym and bagged meals the district provides, the students go into the school’s computer lab to continue their work on curricula from the Michigan Virtual School with regular classroom teachers in the lab answering any questions from the students.
"If they don't want to work, or are sleeping in class, or start posing an attitude with a teacher, they'll be dropped." -Bob Smoots, director, SAFE, Jackson (Mich.) Public Schools
“If they were doing all of this online, they would have to e-mail their questions to the teachers and wait for them to respond online,” says Bob Smoots, a retired Jackson principal who directs the program. “Because the kids we work with are behind in their subject areas, especially reading and writing, they have a lot of trouble with that, including the spelling and typing to send a message. With their teachers right here, they can get their questions answered right away.”
Students attend a credit retrieval lab at Seabreeze High School in Volusia County (Fla.) Schools. It allows the school to offer all four subjects at the same time.
The teachers are regular classroom teachers, certified in their specialties, who are paid $32 per hour for their additional credit recovery work, according to Evans. Smoots, who has 37 years of teaching and administrative experience, mostly in alternative education, says he is paid about the same. The credit recovery team also includes a special education teacher for students who have developmental or medical issues and a “behavior coordinator” who takes attendance and monitors the program’s rigid requirements, including “zero tolerance” on behavior and required attendance for at least 80 percent of the semester-long program. If students leave before 8 p.m., it counts as an absence and “we call their parents to let them know,” Smoots says.
Most of the 20-30 students in the program every semester have serious problems, including previous expulsions. Some are on court-ordered probation for criminal offenses. To get into the program, they must meet with Evans and at least one member of the Jackson Board of Education. Smoots also interviews “every kid and a parent” and spells out the rules, making it clear that “if they don’t want to work, or are sleeping in class, or start posing an attitude with a teacher, they’ll be dropped.”
