Does Online Course-Taking Increase High School Completion and Open Pathways to Postsecondary Education Opportunities?

• In Event: Implementation, Outcomes, and Equity Implications of Online Instruction for Credit Recovery in High Schools

Abstract

Objectives: Recent substantial increases in high school graduation rates have been linked anecdotally to online course-taking for credit recovery. Online course-taking that supports high school completion could open opportunities for postsecondary education pursuits.

Alternatively, poorer quality online instruction could diminish student engagement and learning and discourage persistence toward graduation and further education. In a longitudinal study of online course-taking, we examine whether online course-taking (primarily for credit recovery) increases high school graduation rates and 2-year and 4-year college enrollments, as well as postsecondary institutional quality.

Theoretical framework: We draw on “new institutionalism” in education to understand school district motivations for implementing online course-taking in high schools. New institutionalism suggests that institutional reform of the technical core of public education is motivated by the identification of a performance problem, such as concerns around low high school graduation rates. Through the lens of new institutionalism, credit recovery is essentially a technical fix for the problem of high school students lagging in their accumulation of credits needed for graduation. If the alternative to credit recovery programs is pushing students out of high school, then credit recovery programs that “fix” the performance problem—move students to graduation and reduce disparities in graduation rates—may be the most cost-effective option available to these school districts.

Methods and data sources: We link records of high school students in a large, urban district to data from an online credit recovery program vendor for the 2010-11 through 2017-18 school years. With these longitudinal data, we employ fixed effects models to estimate the average effects of online course-taking on high school outcomes (such as credits earned), including school fixed effects, student fixed effects and grade-by-year fixed effects. In estimating high school graduation and college enrollment outcomes, which we only observe at one time point, our models only include grade and year fixed effects. We additionally estimate inverse probability weighting models with regression adjustment to examine effects of intensity of online course-taking on student outcomes and also use partial identification methods to estimate the effects of online course-taking under less stringent assumptions. Lastly, we draw on observations of credit recovery classrooms to inform our analysis and interpretation of findings.

Results: We find that students taking courses online in this school district earn significantly more credits and are significantly more likely to graduate from high school than similar students who did not take courses online. Their 2- or 4-year college enrollment rates are also about 6 percentage points higher, although the institutional quality of the colleges where they enroll is weaker. Our results also reveal mostly negative but statistically insignificant associations between online course-taking and student performance on standardized tests.

Significance: While the “technical fix” is likely working to help students replace failed courses with credits earned online more quickly, our results question whether the quality of learning in credit recovery programs is sacrificed for efficiency and performance accountability (higher graduation rates).

Authors

• Carolyn Heinrich, Vanderbilt University

• Jennifer Suzanne Darling-Aduana, Georgia State University