This year, more than 1,000 at-risk students in Chicago graduated on time by taking online classes.
While students drop out because of socioeconomic and academic reasons, they also drop out because of some bureaucratic reasons, said Robin Gonzales, manager of distance learning for Chicago Public Schools.
“Online education has helped us to break down the bureaucratic barriers to graduation,” Gonzales said.
Some kids just need a few credits to graduate, but they literally can't get into the classes they need. Either their schools don't offer them at all or they don't offer them at night and in the summer when the students need to take them.
And those schools often tell students to go across town to another location that does offer a class such as second semester Spanish 2. But because of the violence in the city, parents don't want their kids to cross foreign territory.
Instead, students take online classes at one of the 30 high schools that offers them during the summer. This summer, 2,500 students are taking classes online that they previously failed, and another 2,500 are taking classes to supplement their education.
During the academic year, 75 high schools provide online credit recovery classes before and after school in their computer labs.
And they're actually learning the information in those classes in a different way, said Caprice Young, CEO of KC Distance Learning, which owns Aventa Learning, one of the online education providers that partners with the school system.
“When a kid normally takes a high school class and fails it, the usual answer is, 'Well, let’s make them take it again,'” Young said.
If they take a class again, they face the same distractions and negative social pressures from other students that they did before. The teaching doesn't change, either.
“They didn’t get it the first time having group instruction, so it seems kind of misguided to try and teach them the same way," Young said.
But in online classes, students learn from an Illinois-certified expert teacher and move through the course content at their own pace. If they need help, they work with a classroom teacher on site, Gonzales said.
Because the online teacher takes care of the course content, the on-site teacher helps students hurdle the their learning barriers. In face-to-face classes, teachers don't always know that students have major reading deficiencies, work late at night or take care of their kids. But these teachers find out because they work with them individually.
For students who do work late at night or don't want to get up early, the summer online classes offer flexible times, with some schools staying open until 7 p.m.
“We’re able to give the kids what they need, when they need it, where they want it," Gonzales said.
And that's helped more than 1,000 Chicago students graduate this year.
