Proven to Increase Student Achievement

To understand the impact that Apex Learning Comprehensive Courses make on the achievement of credit recovery students, Apex Learning and Dorchester School District Two partnered with a third-party evaluator to study the impact Apex Learning English language arts and math courses have on student performance on the South Carolina HSAP, a state assessment required for high school graduation. The study was initially conducted for the 2010-2011 school year and replicated for the 2011-2012 school year. In both years, researchers investigated the relationship between Apex Learning courses and English language arts and math performance on the HSAP.

Graphs 6 and 7 show the average percent correct score on Apex Learning embedded assessments by quartile. For both school years, a positive relationship was found between students’ percent correct scores on Apex Learning assessments and student performance on the HSAP.

In the 2010-2011 school year, the average student using Apex Learning courses for credit recovery (median) achieved 75.4 percent correct on their Apex Learning assessments. This percent correct score is associated with a gain of 29 percentile points on the HSAP English language arts and math assessments. Students in the first quartile, the lowest performing students, scored an average of 70.6 percent correct on the Apex Learning assessments and achieved a 26 percentile point gain, while students in the third quartile, the highest performing students, scored an average of 80 percent correct on the Apex Learning assessments and saw a 31 percentile point gain.