Credit Recovery Insights from a District Coordinator
Since 2017, Coordinator of Education Services Mark Synnott has overseen the credit recovery program at Perris Union High School District in Southern California, helping thousands of students realize their dream of a high school diploma.
In our conversation, Mr. Synnott also shared three best practices that other districts can use to create a successful credit recovery program.
1. Find a high-quality curriculum that engages students and directly connects to what they need to learn.
Our students needed something to be engaged with. If they've already failed a class, and we’re going to put them into a credit recovery class, it has to be engaging because the normal way of doing education didn't work.
Edmentum tutorials [in Courseware] are nice and sequenced and laid out correctly, simulating what an actual class may look like. Each slide has a specific intent and a purpose for what they're teaching and are embedded with videos, audio, a dictionary section, and a translating section. These are all things that no other credit recovery platform utilizes as well.
2. Customize your recovery program to get the most from it.
Edmentum Courseware serves any one of our high school students who is credit deficient. If they fail the class, they retake that course on Edmentum Courseware.
Our other deployment of Edmentum Courseware is what we call Edmentum Courseware Essentials, and those are custom design courses—scaled-down content that still meets the standards but made especially for our special ed and English language learner students. We also use Edmentum Courseware Essentials at our alternate education sites for massively credit deficient students to give those students a shot at getting a high school diploma.
3. Partner with a company that aligns with your passion for education.
The biggest benefit of working with Edmentum is partnership. I have a partner that's trying to figure out solutions with me to help kids graduate. Having that credit recovery option through Edmentum Courseware has been a lifeline when the educational system fails our kids.
Many of these kids are providing for their families and taking care of three or four siblings at the same time while trying to do their schoolwork. [These students] not caring is not the issue. The access and differentiation are the issues.
Using Edmentum Courseware in the Paris Union High School District for the last six and a half years, I've seen families’ lives change just by their student being able to graduate high school.
Want to learn more about how Edmentum Courseware is designed to promote success in credit recovery models? Visit our Courseware page for more information, or contact us directly.