At-Risk High School Students Recovering Course Credits Online: What We Know and Need to Know

ABSTRACT

The majority of American high school students enrolling in online education are doing so in credit recovery courses. These are online courses specifically for students who previously failed a face-to-face version of the course. Despite the popularity of credit recovery courses, the literature on online learning largely ignores credit recovery courses and students. Assuming credit recovery students are similar to other online learners can be misleading. In this article, the existing literature on credit recovery is reviewed in 3 specific areas: the proliferation of credit recovery courses, the student experience in credit recovery courses, and outcomes and impacts of credit recovery. Suggestions are given for how to advance the credit recovery literature in future research of online learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Credit recovery
• online learning
• K-12
• at risk student populations

Notes

¹ There are no articles included whose analysis is on a sample based outside of the United States because no study of credit recovery outside of the United States was found.