Students fail classes every year and there are several ways to make up those missing credits – summer school, intersession, or Edgenuity which is partnered with Imagine Learning. Edgenuity is an online credit recovery class that  allows students to make the credits up at their own pace.

This is the first year Edgenuity is introduced, last year the courses provided went with the name of Edmentum. Bunden said, “ The reason the district decided to move away from Edmentum and into Edgenuity is the fact that there was a lot of cheating and plagiarism when it came to Edmentum. For example, students could find the test questions before the test, which would be the reason for their passing scores.

There are about more than 90 subjects provided for students. This program prevents cheating since students have to work on their own and there is a plagiarism checker built in. The courses are dependent on student participation and pacing, due to the fact that some courses have 18 units (Spanish) while others (Health) have three. Edgenuity allows one retake per quiz, but locks the program until the teacher assigns another retake and the questions change on each version of the quiz, making it more difficult for students to cheat.

The Edgenuity teachers consist of Jennifer Bunden, Mick Battaglini, and Eric Deleissegues. Battaglini has been teaching the after school class for three years. “Edgenuity is more challenging than Edmentum,” he said. “It’s taking students longer to finish classes, but I think the quality of work is better.”.”

A student enters the course through counselor placement, there can only be 30 students per period, and the classes are offered mainly to seniors and juniors.   These courses are designed to take 60 hours and students can take up to four courses per semester which would be 20 credits, meaning students can make up 40 credits throughout the whole school year.  Bunden, who teaches six sections (periods 1-6), said, “There have been about five students who have completed 20 credits per semester and this semester, because they are going to graduate, there will be about 20 students completing 20 credits by the end of the year”

Senior Nataly Avalos took Edmentum last year and Edgenuity this year. “With Edmentum we  would advance more, although Edgenuity is a good program, it takes longer to get work done,” she said. 

There can be various positive and negative things about this program.  “The pros are that there’s videos and a timeline we have to follow,”Avalos said. A pro that Bunden shared was “there are video instructions that go over the concepts, before there was a lot of reading and students didn’t enjoy reading so they wouldn’t do the assignments.” Senior Lupe Rodrigez said, “I think the pros of the Edgenuity are you get to recover credits at your pace, and it gives you a chance to recover more credits than you regularly would during the year.” Counselor Irene Mancera said, “Since Edgenuity is a new program to all of us, it is really hard for me to see benefits right now, so I think I need another year of this program to see the benefits.” 

A con that was shared by Mancera was “ the course offerings, we don’t have many course offerings like we did last year.” Bunden said a con was  that students aren’t completing a lot of credits per semester, ”It’s very difficult to even do 5 or 10 credits per semester,” she said. Rodriguez said, “Some cons would be, some of the courses are a lot more difficult online, and most courses are super long,”  Avalos said, “Too much work is provided, so we finish courses slower.”

Overall, this new program has been a major improvement this year where students have to show their learning instead of cheating the system. “Students are actually earning their credits instead of getting their credits, for example with Edmentum a lot of the test questions were online, so whoever could cheat better were simply passing their courses,” Bunden said. Another factor is that students have to earn 70% or better on quizzes and tests to progress. “It has definitely set the bar higher,” Battaglini said.