Morton offers a lot of credit recovery

Erick Cardenas and Jonathan Frutos

Short on credits?  No need to be:  Morton East High School provides a lot of options to recover failed credits: Tapestry, night school, summer school, senior plus, incomplete lab, supervision classes, and even independent study.   

Night and summer school classes are available for all current students to make up failed classes – or get ahead on credits to graduate early.  Students can recover .5 credits for each class taken.  The curriculum for these classes mirror day school curriculums.  Tapestry is for students who may be experiencing emotional problems and need help to resolve the problems to graduate. Senior Plus is exclusively for senior students who should have graduated the year prior but are short on credits.  (Students are recommended for the program in May.)  The program is all self-paced and online; class credits are made up using Odyssey ware. (PE cannot be made up this way.)  Once senior plus students finish their programs, they receive their diplomas.  Incomplete lab and supervision classes allow students to make up any missing “required” Common Assessments from the previous semester for free.  (Once the assignment is made up, the student can stop coming to the lab.)   

Many students need credit recovery when they see their grades. What happens when students don’t do credit recovery?  They aren’t on track, and if not made up, they don’t graduate. The high school graduation rate reached a record high of 84 percent (U.S. Department of Education 2017). Despite the gains, over half a million students still drop out of high school each year (U.S. Department of Education 2015). High schools have adopted various strategies designed to keep students who are at risk of not graduating in school and are not on track for graduation.  Did you know Morton East has 5 sources of credit recovery to catch up or even get ahead to graduate early. The options are night school, summer school, senior plus, incomplete lab, supervision classes.  

In a random survey of 100 Morton East students, only 6 had done credit recovery programs at Morton East; the other 94 had not.  Credit recovery is a tool for students to catch up to graduate at Morton East.  Students should meet with their counselor to find the right credit recovery program that fits.