GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

New rules for how students who don’t complete classes can earn make-up credit are open for public comment.

I wrote about the push to regulate so-called “credit recovery” programs, which critics say are less rigorous than regular high school classes, in April:

The proposed policy appears for the most part to codify practices that are already taking place in many city schools, said Stephen Phillips, a professor in Brooklyn College’s school of education who worked as a principal and superintendent in the city. The policy shows that [the State Education Department] is “trying to catch up some standards to what was going on” inside schools, he said.

SED is now asking teachers, administrators, parents, students and others to fill out a four-question “Make-up Course Credit Survey.“ 

Interim Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Santiago Taveras told the City Council’s education committee last month that the city does not track schools’ use of credit recovery programs. City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson cited Taveras’s testimony yesterday at a rally against mayoral control as one reason that he doesn’t believe that the city’s graduation rate has actually improved, as official statistics show.

David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College professor who has been critical of credit recovery, wrote on GothamSchools that the state’s proposed new rules would “do nothing to stem this tide of empty credits.”