High School Credit Recovery
Elko County, Nevada
Julie Barker works at the tipping point of high school education. Her students are seniors who have missed or failed courses necessary for graduation. As an instructional assistant at Elko High School in northeastern Nevada, it’s her job to tip the balance in favor of graduation.
“We were looking for a way to accomplish credit recovery without adding students to existing classes,” says Barker. “If we have a senior who has failed sophomore English, we want to give that student a way to learn the material without increasing the size of the English class offered ot current sophomores.”
Beyond the issue of class size, some seniors have difficulty in the traditional classroom environment. “Many of these students are capable of the work, but they need a different structure,” notes Barker.
Read the Official A+ Published Success Story HERE
Same Destination, Different Paths
Elko High School has about 1,300 students. It is located in a rural community with a diverse student population. Beginning in February 2009, with Barker’s facilitation, Elko began applying a new dimension of technology to the challenge of getting more seniors to graduate. “We use the
A+nyWhere Learning System® (A+LS™) courseware in a computer lab with ten workstations,” says Barker. “Last semester, our first with A+LS, we had the lab open six hours a day. Students are brought in through counselor recommendation.”
The learning environment was new, but Barker’s objective was the same: to tip the balance in favor of graduation by providing individualized attention to individual students. At any one time, the students in the lab are working on different courses—English, math, and social science, for instance. Each student responds best to a particular level of guidance. Baker leverages the features of the A+LS courseware to step in with the right help at the right moment.
“I had one senior who needed a math class,” says Barker. “She was really struggling. Math wasn’t an easy subject for her. A+LS let her realize her mistakes right after a test. I could watch her closely, and then help her see where the right answers were coming from. That helped her a lot.”
Other students actually do better with less intervention. “One of our real success stories, also a senior, needed two math classes, a government class (a junior class), and economics (a senior class). She is a sharp kid, very results oriented, who just didn’t buy into the usual class‑ room setting,” says Barker. “She was very busy, but she managed to complete everything and graduate.”
Shared Standards, Different Minds
Barker can offer her students the individual attention they need, in part because she can rely on A+LS content and pedagogy. The A+LS curriculum is carefully aligned with Nevada’s state education standards, as it is in all 50 states. Within the A+LS environment itself, educators can conveniently verify, point by point, how and where the A+LS curriculum aligns with their own state’s standards.
In terms of pedagogy, American Education Corporation, the developer and vendor of A+LS, employs an instructional design that is based on sound educational research. Its dynamic design, regularly re‑confirmed and evaluated against new ideas, always focuses on performance: progress
as rapid as a student’s ability will allow, long‑term retention, and relevance to students with different backgrounds.
To Barker, the strengths of A+LS are necessities, not options. Across the board, A+LS has been well received by Julie’s seniors. “They love it. They need to make up classes. They can move ahead self‑paced. There’s immediate feed‑ back. There’s a carrot for them, a more obvious one than they get from sitting in a classroom. They can say, ‘Oh, yeah. I passed that. I can do this.’ The most interesting
part is that they don’t need to be constantly reminded of how to use it. You show them and they do it.”
The technical side has to be right, too. Julie’s students have scheduled sessions on A+LS. Time is too short to spend on computer problems. Still, nothing is perfect. “We had a couple of kids who we could bring up as administrators but who couldn’t log on themselves. A+LS tech support was very helpful. We called them up, and they found a solution. My sense is that they’ll do whatever it takes.”
It’s individual students who do well in school or poorly, graduate or do not, and so individual students are the substance of Barker’s everyday focus. But she recognizes that the A+LS courseware must be judged strategically as well. “From when we started in early February 2009 until graduation day on May 29, we administered 80 classes, and had a completion rate of about 85 percent,” Barker concludes. “That’s pretty impressive to us.”
Read the Official A+ Published Success Story HERE
Tags: A+ High School Credit Recovery Success, A+ Success Elko County Nevada, High School Credit Recovery Elko County, High School Credit Recovery Nevada
