Online Credit Recovery as an Intervention for High School Students Who Fail Courses

Online credit recovery (OCR) refers to online courses that high school students take after previously failing the course. Many have suggested that OCR courses are helping students to graduate from high school without corresponding increases in academic skills. This study analyzes administrative data from the state of North Carolina to evaluate the efficacy of OCR using full data from public and private OCR providers. Findings indicate that students who fail courses and enroll in OCR are 20 percentage points more likely to earn course credit, have lower test scores of up to two tenths of a standard deviation, and are about eight percentage points more likely to graduate high school within 4 years than students who repeat courses traditionally. Test score differences are particularly large for Biology compared to Math I and English II. Hispanic and economically disadvantaged OCR students are more likely to graduate high school than their peers.