An Evaluation of Credit Recovery as an Intervention for Students Who Fail Courses

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

Abstract

Purpose
The high school graduation rate has increased each year since 2002, reaching a record high of 80 percent in the 2010-11 school year. However, test scores trends have not kept pace. Many have suggested that online credit recovery (OCR) courses are helping more students to graduate from high school without corresponding increases in academic skills. We empirically test if OCR courses lead to a higher likelihood of high school graduation or lower test scores.
Perspective
Under a rational investment framework, high school students who have failed courses required for high school graduation might conclude that the cost of the extra time needed to complete high school does not exceed the returns to completing high school. One way to address this conception is to reduce the cost of failing courses. OCR potentially reduces the perceived cost of earning course credit for failed courses by providing a more flexible, potentially faster, option to earn course credit than repeating courses in full. However, making it easier to earn course credit for failed courses could also lead to smaller gains in student learning.

Data
This study utilizes administrative data from the state of North Carolina. The sample in this study is restricted to students who failed a core, required academic course anytime in high school. Within this sample, some students are identified as OCR students (i.e., the treatment group), while other students will attempt to earn credit traditionally, termed “repeating a course for credit” (henceforth referred to as RCFC; the comparison group).

Methods
We assess whether OCR students have lower test scores than RCFC students using a student-by-school fixed effect model with course and grade fixed effects and time-varying student and school covariates. Our empirical strategy for the outcomes of graduating from high school or dropping out of high school is within-school matching OCR and RCFC students using coarsened exact matching and Mahalanobis distance with a robust set of variables from when the students were in 8th grade (pre-treatment). We also implement a variety of robustness checks to assess whether our results remain under multiple specifications.

Results
Findings indicate that students who fail courses and enroll in OCR have lower test scores, are more likely to graduate from high school, and are less likely to drop out than RCFC students. The results on test scores are robust to all specifications with results on dropping out of high school robust to all student-level specifications. OCR students are no longer predicted to be more likely to graduate from high school once data on student behavior is included in the matching models.

Significance
This study validates the utility of OCR in decreasing the dropout rate at the student level but possibly at the expense of student learning. As schools wrestle with the question of enacting policies that might increase their graduation rates to the detriment of scores on high-stakes assessments, this study provides more information on which to base these decisions.

Authors

• Samantha Viano, George Mason University

• Gary Henry, University of Delaware