Dive Brief:

• Students who refuse to go to school because of severe social anxiety fall behind, and a new program called Aspire in Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools helps these students with credit recovery and coping skills.
• District Administration reports Aspire is housed in the Quander Road School, a therapeutic day program already set up to serve students with a range of special needs, with small class sizes and access to clinical staff members.
• Students with severe social anxiety participate in an online credit recovery program to get on track academically, and they learn to work through social situations without being consumed by their anxiety before transferring back into their home schools.

Dive Insight:

The graduation rate is up nationwide and many schools have experimented with credit recovery options to make that possible. A relatively new national philosophy for education to actually serve every child and place all students on a path toward high school graduation and college and career success is a major motivator for alternative programs.

In Los Angeles, a credit recovery program helped the school district achieve a record-high graduation rate last school year, but critics said the credit recovery coursework was too easy. Los Angeles Unified is revising its standards to make the courses more rigorous. Students who graduate with a diploma but without the skills that should back it up are at a disadvantage in the workforce, and they contribute to high remediation rates in college. Districts must balance graduation rate goals with their responsibilities to prepare students for what comes after high school.