*UPDATED

While LA Unified is firmly committed to online credit recovery classes as a means to the district’s newly stated top goal — 100 percent graduation — Los Angeles charter school operators use these classes much more sparingly, as their graduation rates tend to be far ahead of the district’s.

At three of the city’s largest charter management organizations, no more than 5 percent of students have taken an online credit recovery course. LA Unified has yet to report how many of their 2016 graduates used credit recovery to gain a diploma. A $15-million credit recovery program took LA Unified’s projected graduation rate from 49 percent last fall to an estimated 75 percent this summer, a record. The official graduation rate will be reported later this fall.

The three CMO’s also have more stringent policies for testing out of a course. LA Unified allows students to test out of much of a course if they can score 60 percent on a pre-test. The charters set that bar higher or don’t allow testing out.

“I strongly support the use of online learning, not just for credit recovery but for enrichment and for broadening the curriculum. That said, across all of our schools, only 1.3 percent of the course credits are provided through online learning,” said Caprice Young, who is CEO of Magnolia Public Schools and also a former LA Unified school board president.

Last school year, as part of a $15 million program, LA Unified for the first time implemented a major push for online credit recovery courses across the district. The move was in response to a looming graduation crisis, as the school board raised the bar for graduation requirements and installed a series of courses called “A through G.” Students would need to take and pass the A-G courses before the end of their senior year, and if they earned all C grades or above would be eligible for admittance into California’s public universities, although the district allows D’s for graduation.

The district was unprepared for the raised bar, so part way through the fall of 2015 the credit recovery program kicked in. This year the courses were offered as soon as school started.

The dramatic increase in the graduation rate has turned some heads in the academic world, with some experts questioning the validity and rigor of online credit recovery courses. In that program, students without enough credits to graduate retake classes during free periods, after school, on Saturdays and during the winter break. The courses are online and have either a teacher running the class along with a computer program, known as blended learning, or an all-online course known as virtual learning. If students prove proficiency with the material they receive a C grade at LA Unified. A’s and B’s aren’t an option.

But LA Unified is not alone in using online credit recovery programs despite their controversial nature. Most large districts across the country also use them, as do at least three of the largest CMOs authorized by LA Unified, although each one appears to use them on a far more limited basis. And each CMO — PUC Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and Magnolia Public Schools — had a different set of guidelines regarding if students could pre-test out of some course material.

PUC SCHOOLS

“We most definitely use it very sparingly. It is not our goal to use it in place of intervention and support,” said Leslie Chang, superintendent of leadership and instruction for PUC Schools. PUC operates 16 schools, of which six are high schools.

Chang said PUC used Apex Learning for its online programs, which is one of two companies that LA Unified also uses. Chang estimated that 4 or 5 percent of PUC graduates last year had taken at least one online course and said it was most commonly used when a student transferred into a PUC school already behind in credits.

“If the child is behind and we determine that based on their current schedule they may need to take an additional course, then we will offer that option to them. We want to make sure it is not the go-to for everything that is required for graduation for our schools. Typically, a select few number of students will use the blended learning approach,” Chang said.

PUC also has different guidelines on pre-testing. While LA Unified allows students to skip chapters or units if they pass at least 60 percent of a pre-test, PUC sets the pre-test bar at 70 percent.

“I think there is a place for online learning in the academic experience of every student in today’s day and age. I do not think it can replace the power and effectiveness of a teacher, and if a student is behind in credits or content, then blended learning can have a very powerful effect,” Chang said. “But they really do have to be in tandem with teacher support and done very strategically and intentionally.”

MAGNOLIA

Young said she thought that LA Unified’s approach to online credit recovery will become more balanced in time. Magnolia operates eight independent charter schools within LA Unified, and four of them are schools for grades 6-12.

“I think LAUSD is going in the right direction, and the next step is to get more nuanced in how they use it. This is pretty common when school districts implement online learning. The first year it may be overused or underused or inappropriately used, but as they get more nuanced about how to match the right kids with the right courses and the right content it makes sense,” Young said.

Magnolia has an 80 percent pre-test bar and they use Fuel Education for their programs. Young estimated that 5 percent of Magnolia’s graduates last year took an online credit recovery course.

“And that’s because kids don’t always start with us in 6th grade, they may come to us in their junior year and they are already behind and we have to help them catch up, and sometimes that requires them to essentially take more than six courses in the semester. Adding more online can catch them up,” Young said.

Young also defended the idea of pre-testing.

“One of the things that the online learning is for is at the beginning of each unit the student can demonstrate their knowledge, and then if they can demonstrate their knowledge that they know it, there is no sense in boring the student and making them retake it,” Young said.

ALLIANCE

Perhaps the biggest reason the large CMOs use online credit recovery on a more limited basis is because they tend to be far ahead of the district in graduation rates. Magnolia’s graduation rate in 2015 was 96.4 percent. Alliance’s grad rate in 2014-15 was 95 percent, and PUC says they exceed 90 percent every year. With fewer students in danger of not graduating, fewer are obviously in need of credit recovery.

“Graduation is what we do. It’s part of our DNA. It’s what we do. And it could be what LAUSD does too and hopefully they will,” Young said.

Robert Pambello, an area superintendent for Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, said Alliance’s use is “very limited. Every student has a graduation plan, and so we track students on a regular basis for being on track for graduation, and there are very few kids that actually need the credit recovery.” Alliance is LA Unified’s largest CMO and operates 28 schools. Eighteen of them are high schools.

Pambello said less than 3 percent of Alliance’s graduates last year took an online course and that Alliance does not allow pre-testing.

“We do not have that feature. The student takes the whole course because they did not pass the course,” he said. “We don’t do pre-testing at all, they are assigned the course and they work through the course at their own pace.”

GREEN DOT

Not every large CMO is as centrally organized with its online curriculum as PUC, Alliance and Magnolia. Green Dot Public Schools, which manages nine high schools in Los Angeles and Inglewood, has online credit recovery programs but does not centrally track how many students are taking them. The courses are viewed no differently than its regular curriculum, according to Sean Thibault, communications director for Green Dot.

“It’s not like there is an online department or a whole team working on online programs, this is just part of what the whole curriculum team does,” he said. “Every one of the Green Dot schools in high school are offering A-G curriculum as the baseline, there is no friendlier curriculum they could do. So all the schools are doing assessments and doing what they can with proficiency and to catch some students up in the school year.”

As far as what the guidelines are, Thibault said “as a general rule, where students need that kind of option (with credit recovery) we have made it available. I don’t think that there is a model that is enforced or universal for pre-testing, but it is more school-by-school, or depending it could be course-by-course or instructor-by-instructor or student-by-student. And that’s Green Dot’s approach, to identify the student’s needs and develop the instruction they need to be successful.”

Pacific Palisades Charter High School is not a CMO but a standalone independent charter school. While it also offers credit recovery, like Green Dot it does not centrally track how many students are taking the courses. The school has been offering online credit recovery courses for five years during summer school, but this year it also began offering them throughout the school year as well. Like LA Unified and the large CMOs, the online courses are overseen by a licensed teacher.

“We do not know (how many take online credit recovery). We don’t track it in that way, because when the student passes the course, because it has a highly qualified teacher running it, it doesn’t have a separate designation,” said Jeff Hartman, director of academic planning and guidance.

Palisades does not allow for any pre-testing out of chapters or units. Randy Tenan-Snow, an English teacher at Palisades who helps oversee online credit recovery, predicted the school will be expanding its program in the coming years.

“I believe that as we gather more data and we start enrolling more students, I see that online and blended programs will be the wave of the future for most students that are trying to do credit recovery,” she said. “It is very difficult to add a class when you are already taking six classes, so to take a class online it definitely helps our community and our students. We will probably expand as we move forward.”

*UPDATED to reflect PUC operates six high schools, not four. 

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer recently sat down with LA School Report at his field office tucked away in an east Hollywood strip mall, where there is a unique partnership with the Youth Policy Institute and the school district that hosts after-school programs, adult classes and classes for homeless youth.

During the hour-long interview, Zimmer spoke about his passion to eradicate the school readiness gap (the achievement gap between students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds as they enter the school system compared to their white and wealthier peers), the relationship between the school board and Superintendent Michelle King, who is entering her ninth month as the leader of the nation’s second-largest school district, and his experience working as a counselor at Marshall High School helping students cross the graduation stage.

Here are Zimmer’s comments on the district’s online credit recovery program, administered by companies including Edgenuity, which has been scrutinized for its rigor amid the district’s recent announcement that its graduation has reached a record 75 percent even as the bar has been raised with the requirement that students pass the A through G, the course criteria established by UC faculty. (Lightly edited for clarity and length.)

• Read more on credit recovery: Are the courses ‘very rigorous’?, Credit recovery starts early this year, Zimmer expresses frustration over credit recovery, LAUSD summer school had better teaching 

Q: We’d like to talk to you about the district’s online credit recovery program. On Tuesday (Aug. 23), you made it clear that you have concerns about it.

A: It’s a great concern to me.

Q: What are your concerns? What do you want to see done this year? What did you learn from last year? 

A: So, there’s so many places to start on where I’m concerned. But I think the most important place to start about where I’m concerned is I’m simultaneously concerned about the right now and the long view. The long view is not about how many assignments were in Edgenuity. Not that I’m not concerned about that — actually I am.

But I am much more concerned that we believe having an individual education plan for every middle and high school student is a key lever for moving the needle on this, that we have to be looking very, very carefully at career and training pathways and I don’t think we are. And as a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure we’re not.

And so, both in the immediate short-term when you’re looking at academic counseling loads and ratios, the medium-term in terms of if we do try and bring those down, do we actually have the folks who are credentialed and who intentionally want to work with our students in this way and the long-view is we know we’re going to be in a teacher shortage. I know we’re going to be in counselor shortage. What are we doing in terms of our partnerships to build the right kind of pipelines to make sure the right people are in those counseling seats with the right set of  skills, with the right asset-based mindset about our students and the right balance of a caseload where they can actually do this?

Having an individual graduation plan, as important as it might be, needs to be more important than just having a piece of paper. I mean having a piece of paper actually for urban school districts, where the belief system was not what it was in affluent school districts, is a step and an important step. Because having an individualized graduation plan, by definition, means we expect you to graduate and we expect you to graduate fully completing the A through G’s. So this is not triage or salvage work. This is intentional and very purposeful and is of high rigor and high quality all the way through. When you have a plan, there’s an infinitely better chance that the plan will be executed, as opposed to not having any plan.

Q: How concerned were you when you heard UC was looking at this credit recovery program and might reject the courses? (Update: Since this interview, a UC spokeswoman said UC has reviewed the courses and there will be no changes to the admission status of incoming freshmen accepted to UC.) 

A: So short-term obviously, we’re concerned for our students because it’s certainly no fault of theirs. They completed the courses that they were asked to complete to graduate, fulfilling the A through G’s, so I have a short-term concern, of course, for them.

Am I concerned that they’re looking at this? No. I think they should look at it. I’m very skeptical of online recovery programs. I’m very skeptical of online instruction period. I say skeptical in the literal sense. I’m not a Luddite on it. I’m not reactively opposed to it. I think that we in the new terrain that is blended instruction, blended instruction within a year or two is not going to be some kind of branded movement that the Alliance charter schools try and so, therefore, it is wonderful.

Blended instruction is going to be part of instruction. Period. In many ways it already is. Do our teachers have the right training and support to use it the best way possible? I don’t think so. Not yet. And so, yeah, I’m interested and concerned and skeptical all at the same time. It’s not necessarily negative.

Q: Will the school board be taking another look at this?

A: As it related to Edgenuity and all those contracts, the first thing to say is that let’s be clear on what everybody expected and what happened and what the narrative should and shouldn’t be around this.

Access to an A through G college-preparatory curriculum is a foregone conclusion in affluent school districts, whether they be suburban, wherever they are. Nobody asks that question. Nobody says are our students capable of this level of rigor? It’s assumed that they are. And that is, not to give a lecture, but that is just very clear exposition of systemic racism. That’s what it is and it shouldn’t be called anything else.

And so when there’s all these questions about did our students really do this? I think we have to check ourselves. And go back to 10 years ago, 12 years ago when we first passed the A through G and how much of this is going to hurt students.

Go back two years ago to the editorial pages of the LA Times where literally they said we are setting up these students or those students for failure. We still use this language today. Catastrophic failure did not happen. Let’s say it turns out that this “all hands on deck” approach that really probably the true rate was more like 70 percent than 75 percent if you don’t accept these credit recovery courses.

Q: Do you know how many students used online credit recovery courses in order to graduate?

A: No. Today on Aug. 25, I stand by 100 percent what our numbers are, but I also understand that folks are looking at them and they should. But even if the numbers were 70 percent, it’s important to understand that’s not what people thought would happen, that’s not what people thought our kids were capable of, or our teachers were capable of, or our system was capable of.

Now when there was this big panic around when the fall numbers came out and the fall numbers looked very low, that was even somewhat at the district level, both the panic around that and the misunderstanding of that was mostly from folks who had never worked graduation. I worked graduation for 10 years. I was in charge of the kids who were between 20 and 60 credits down when the fall semester started. And that’s what I did and that was a chunk of my job.

Q: What was your role?

A: I was intervention coordinator at Marshall High School. I always had that as a half-time position. I didn’t want to leave the classroom. We also had over 4,300 students. Marshall was a very different school back then. Most students from the Los Feliz, Silver Lake community did not go to Marshall. It was a very different place and so I understand what it’s like to get kids across the stage. And I understand when we were talking about two to four classes away, we were not in a crisis. We had to be very, very intentional about how it was done, but it was only because there was so much attention and scrutiny to it, now I didn’t think that that was a bad thing because that allowed us to move resources to do this “all hands on deck,” but what people don’t understand is at every comprehensive high school every spring, it’s all hands on deck. That’s what you do.

And so what happened was not this kind of miracle on ice or miracle on the graduation stage that people kind of thought. That’s what happens every year at schools because life happens to kids. Even kids that are not so far off the rails.

After spending almost 20 years working almost exclusively with adolescents, that there’s very few things that are absolutely true. But what’s almost absolutely true, if you’re going to be in high school for four years, you’re going to have one really rough semester. It’s this invisible cloud of adolescent angst, or a break-up, or a family situation, or normal stressors, or non-normative stressors, or whatever it is, it hits almost every kid at some point during adolescence.

If you have the system in place, especially family systems in place, especially family systems in place where the adults do not lose their minds when this happens, then it’s a rough time and everything’s OK. What happens in families that are already in crisis is oftentimes the entire system collapses or the perception of the student is that everything is collapsing around them, and so without a comprehensive system of supports at the school site, that’s how we lose kids.

And sure, there are gang issues, there are teen pregnancies, whatever the issues are, those issues become predominant during a time that’s fairly normative in adolescence, and so when you look at it from that view and you look at how few resources our students had and how just there wasn’t the stability that would put the guardrails around that one rough adolescent period, it was not unusual for even a fairly strong student to have failed a couple of classes because life happened and there weren’t those guardrails. So not tremendously shocking for those of us who have done this that our numbers were where they were. Certainly urgent and certainly demanded everyone’s full attention.

Q: But it was not something you hadn’t seen before?

A: Not something I haven’t seen before. Again, there was some of this that was about the increased rigor under the A through G, absolutely.

All I’m saying is is that there were other factors involved, but kind of the baseline factor very few people outside of those of us who had worked this for so long understood. There were many factors, a whole cacophony of things, that made the numbers probably a little bit more severe than they had been previously, but just at a baseline level you know that you start your senior year, you’re going to have to offer some very focused resources and some very focused attention to get kids across that line.

So there was a very public exhibition on a district-wide level of what happens at schools every year and yes, it was punctuated and maybe a little bit more extreme, but not like a new thing.

Now what was new in some ways were these online credit recovery resources. I visited a bunch of classrooms where they were doing it. You don’t learn completely about a program from visiting it for one day or even two days. Was there a teacher in the classroom? Absolutely. Did the teacher seem like they knew what they were doing? Absolutely. Would I have been thankful if these resources were in place when I was trying to get certain kids across the graduation line? Absolutely. Did it seem like it was real and there was rigor to what I was seeing students doing? Yeah. Yes. but do I know for sure? We won’t know for sure until UC takes a look at it, until we continue to take a look at it.

Q: Did online credit recovery work too well because it has taken the luster off the grad rate? Did you expect to break the graduation record?

A: I think the trajectories have been very steady. If we had gone from 64 or even 67 percent to 75. This was a clear trajectory, more resources on hand, not only the online credit recovery. I encourage you to visit what’s called an II (Individualized Instruction) lab at adult schools that’s a more traditional version of credit recovery. We opened II labs through spring break and that was one of the things behind the scenes. Sometimes, and you’ll rarely see this on the dais, but there are some things I will not just take no for an answer. The idea that we have students striving toward graduation and we were going to shut down for a week during spring break, was just, that could not happen.

Q: Does that usually happen?

A: That’s what usually happens. Even if we only served 100 kids that week, there were seven or eight centers open during the spring break and kids came. There were all kinds of things that were happening to give the proper attention to the first time under A through G. To some of the other factors, it was not just credit recovery. It certainly didn’t work too well. What we have to see is what’s the role of this. What’s the right role.

I have a particular view of how data should be used, particularly standardized test data. I’m sometimes characterized as anti-data, but I’m very concerned about the way data is used. I have strong convictions of data as an instrument around calibration and redesign vs. data as a hammer. Data as a hammer is about political agendas, it’s not about getting to better for kids. The same is true about blended learning, online credit recovery. This is part of our toolbox right now, and to toss it out of that tool box when it can really help students would be both counterintuitive and would not be fair, truthfully.

Q: What is the ultimate goal?

A: We need to design instructional programs so that we’re not in the position of doing credit recovery and certainly not credit recovery because the instructional delivery wasn’t adequate or the supports weren’t adequate. There’s going to be a degree of credit recovery that’s going to happen, as I explained before, because from my experience because of adolescence and the things that happen, there’s always going to be some credit recovery that you need to do. But our entire system should be geared towards, if we really believe these kinds of things about RTI (response to intervention), if we really believe in the differentiation of instruction and we are training our teachers and supporting our teachers well about how you do differentiation that would be what our primary focus should be, not on recovery.

Q: What would you like it to look like?

A: What I would like it to look like, again, is better professional development, better supports for teachers on an ongoing basis, I would like it to have an informational dashboard so that we know where there are problems sooner and we can do intervention rather than recovery.

This is hard work. When you’re really talking about changing mindsets when you’re talking about changing hearts and minds both in general, but at school sites. When you’re talking about constant improvement in terms of instructional quality. We have not given a lot of attention to lowering the affective filter (a term used by Stephen Krashen, which refers to negative emotional and motivational factors — like anxiety, self-consciousness— that can interfere with processing information, like learning a second language) to getting to better instructional quality. It’s not about, do you have a skill that you weren’t trained for in your teacher preparation program. That’s a very deficit mindset approach.

The vast majority of teachers want to do right by our kids. Of course, we have teachers who shouldn’t be in front of kids. We made a lot of strides in the last five years, but that’s not the majority of our teachers. The vast majority of teachers are teachers because they want kids to break through and succeed. We need to lower the affective filter among our instructors on getting to better skill sets to meet all of these needs. Differentiation is one of the hardest things, if you talk to teachers, to do. It’s very hard for me as an ESL teacher. We came to differentiation early on because by definition we’re going to get kids at very different levels especially if you’re in a very diverse ESL class, like I did.

What I want us to commit to is very honest and open conversations with our teams on the front line about what they need. Look, we had a very fear-based system under John Deasy. There were reasons why that happened. In the long run, while there were some shifts and some shaking that needed to happen in the system, we injured the profession. We injured people’s confidence, people did not believe that we believed in them and when you don’t think the leadership in the district believes in you, you’ve got a huge problem.

Coming up: More Q & A with Zimmer, as he discusses the board’s relationship with Superintendent Michelle King and his drive to eradicate the school readiness gap.

Zimmer asked for a breakdown of how many students are graduating with D grades and in what subjects.

“How many graduate with several D’s? How many of those D’s are in algebra?” asked Zimmer, who said he tries to remain data-driven in his decisions. “I see this and it causes me a lot of stress.”

He also wanted to know if the district is notifying local colleges and universities to let them know that the second-largest school district in the country is hiring academic counselors again.

“We know about the teacher shortage coming up, but I’m worried that we need to be working on hiring academic counselors,” Zimmer said. He pointed out that the district administrators should let the local colleges know of the district’s needs. “If they know we’re hiring, they will graduate them. This is a pretty market-driven system.”

Those academic counselors will also help students with their credit recovery program and push them toward graduation, he noted.

Although some of the academic scores came close to the district’s targeted goals, some were sorely lacking.

Cynthia Lim, the executive director of the Office of Data and Accountability.

For example, every high school student is supposed to have an Individualized Graduation Plan (IGP), but only 59 percent do, said Cynthia Lim, the executive director of the Office of Data and Accountability for LA Unified.

“We had a few glitches in the system,” Lim explained.

At one point Tuesday, Zimmer turned to the new student school board member, Karen Calderon, and asked if she had an Individualized Graduation Plan. No, she didn’t, but she said she has a good relationship with the counselors at her high school.

Also, about 38 percent of the district students taking the college-level Advanced Placement Exams received a 3 or higher, making them eligible to get college credit, Lim said. The target that the district is striving for next year is 40 percent.

“We have some improvement needed there too,” Lim reported.

The school district also wanted at least 48 percent of graduating seniors to pass the A-G class requirements with a C grade or better. They hit 42 percent.

“We have some work to do there,” Lim said. She also pointed out that the school board voted that students could get their high school diploma if they received a D-grade in the A-G classes, but “the goal is still to be college prepared and we want to cap it at a C. We are trying to improve that D to a C.”

Fellow board member Ref Rodriguez echoed some of Zimmer’s concerns and said, “We need to know how we got some of those scores up.” He added, “As far as the Individualized Graduation Plans, we need to do something about that.”

Zimmer pointed out that the district had laid off academic counselors in the past that were supposed to be helping students achieve success in graduating and steer them toward college. He said he fears that not enough academic counselors are graduating from local universities, and the district will suffer.

“We cut so much during the recession in non-roster classroom positions,” Zimmer said. “I know well that USC is only now restarting their counselor education program and we are two to three years out to getting those counselors.”

Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson said the district is working with Title 1 money to help schools that need extra resources. She said the district is also encouraging students to consider a counseling career.

In an interview, Gipson said, “What we’re doing puts a whole new perspective on what credit recovery is.”

She said the district is creating more pathways to accelerate student graduation and encouraging dual enrollment with community colleges. They are also working closely with USC, UCLA, Cal State and schools to share resources and produce the best graduates.

As far as the D grades, Gipson said, “a D-grade is not the goal. The goal is 100 percent graduation and high grades for all students. We will be increasing the rigor and calibrating the work we do in the system.”

Gipson said they want to encourage college-bound students from the early level of schooling. “You can imagine we’re pretty excited about what we’re doing and what can happen in every single grade level.”

She added, “The entire LAUSD family knows it starts in preschool. And we’re mapping those opportunities not just for the seniors who are getting ready to go to community college, but doing some design planning that takes them from preschool and graduation to high school and beyond.”

Miranda Rector, who graduated from Venice High School, with LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King at Tuesday’s district graduation ceremony. (Credit: LA Unified Communications and Media Relations)

*UPDATED

Preliminary data show that 74 percent of LA Unified high school seniors met new graduation requirements, the first class required to pass college preparatory classes, the district announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Michelle King made the announcement during a morning ceremony with the school board celebrating Class of 2016 graduates.

“This is the first class that stepped up to meet this challenge,” King said, according to a tweet from the district’s official Twitter account. “They are the pioneers.”

Supt. King said, “This is the first class that stepped up to meet this challenge. They are the pioneers.”

— LAUSD (@LASchools) June 21, 2016

This year marks the first year seniors had to pass A through G standards, a series of courses required for acceptance into California’s public universities, in order to graduate.

In January, the district said just 54 percent of high school seniors were on track to graduate.

At Tuesday’s graduation ceremony, from left, former Laker A.C. Green, Canoga Park High graduate Jeremiah Brown, Washington Preparatory High grad Adonis Warren, Superintendent Michelle King and Laura Adkins, who also graduated from Washington Prep. (Credit: LA Unified Communications and Media Relations)

King called for an “all hands on deck” approach to get students on track to graduate, along with aggressive implementation of a $15 million credit recovery program.

The district will have a graduation rate estimate in late August. The California Department of Education releases the previous year’s official graduate rate each spring.

That graduation rate will include students who dropped out. The 74 percent of students who passed their A-G courses are of students who were enrolled in school. It does not include students who dropped out along the way, officials said.

Last year’s graduation rate was 72 percent when the tougher standards were not required.

• Read more: By the numbers: Did ‘all hands on deck’ save LA Unified’s sinking graduation rate?

*This story has been updated to show that 74 percent is not the graduation rate, but is the percentage of enrolled students who met new graduation requirements to pass college preparatory courses.

LA Unified began the new year facing a formidable challenge, as only 54 percent of its senior class was projected to be on track for passing all their A through G standards, a series of courses required for acceptance into California’s public universities. The new, higher graduation standards went into effect for the first time this year.

But an “all hands on deck” call from the district’s superintendent, Michelle King, along with aggressive implementation of a $15 million credit recovery program, may have saved the district from a sizable drop-off in its graduation rate. District officials have actually predicted the rate will now rise this year to 80 percent, although preliminary estimates won’t be available until November.

Check out the above graphic to see how the district’s graduation rate has looked since the 2009-10 school year, which is the first year the state started using four-year cohort graduation rates as the official measuring stick.

The prediction of an 80 percent graduation rate made by the district was not official, but more anecdotal and based on the high number of students enrolled in credit recovery programs to complete their A through G courses. The last official projection was 68 percent, but the district won’t be doing any more projections until the preliminary rate is announced in November.

Here’s how the LA Unified projections for A through G completion have looked since the fall:

As of April, with 68 percent on track for A-G completion and poised to graduate, a large number of students may still be left behind, whether the district achieves 80 percent or not. There are also graduation requirements beyond A-G, which could impact the numbers. Dropout rates are not yet available for this year’s class, but the class of 2014-15 experienced 6,095 dropouts. One of the district’s five official goals is “100 percent graduation,” and even if the district reaches a new record of 80 percent of its 31,808 seniors graduating, that means more than 6,000 students won’t graduate. And those are in addition to thousands of students who have dropped out of the class over the last four years.

When it comes to this year’s graduating class, there was still a lot of work the district needed to do upon the last projection. Within the 68 percent “on track” to meet their A-G standards was a significant portion failing at least one class after 10 weeks. Here’s how things looked at the last projection on April 4 for the district’s 31,808 seniors:

If LA Unified is able to get to an 80 percent graduation rate this year, it also would represent a significant jump in A-G completion. Here’s how the A-G completion rates have looked since 2010:

Even if LA Unified does reach 80 percent, or simply surpasses last year’s record of 72 percent, it still is behind the state as a whole:

Randy Dwayne May Jr. talks about meeting graduation requirements after being in three juvenile camps.

LA Unified is expanding a Camps to College program that helps students coming out of juvenile detention camps get back into school and graduate.

Since the program launched two years ago in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Mental Health Department and the Los Angeles Probation Office, it has served 1,189 students. Most of them have come from the South District (299); the fewest have come from the Northwest District (73).

The Camps to College program is currently located at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center. In August it will open at the Harris Newmark Continuation School just west of downtown LA, and the district hopes to replicate it in more locations.

“We are not opening a new school, but creating a model that is changing the face of youth transitioning from juvenile camp so they can reintegrate to school and get all the services they need to stabilize,” said Jesus Corral, senior director of the Los Angeles County Probation Department who is working closely with LA Unified on the transitional program. “This is a model we have been working on for quite some time. We are transitioning youth into another school or alternative school based on their needs in a very individualized basis.”

More than half of the students in juvenile youth detention camps are from LA Unified schools. “It is more important now than ever to work together and divert youth from the juvenile justice system and open doors for youth coming out of the juvenile justice system,” said Corral, who on Tuesday addressed board member Monica Garcia’s Successful School Climate Progressive Discipline & Safety Committee.

From LAUSD

“We can replicate this in all the other local districts to help these students be successful,” said Erika F. Torres, director of Pupil Services and Drop-Out Prevention and Recovery in LA Unified’s Student Health Services.

When the program expands to Harris Newmark in August, it will include probation department support, mental health experts and Public Service & Attendance counselors as well as other school support.

Jesus Corral, LA County Probation Department

“I see this like a triage,” Torres said. “We will assess their needs and put in place the supports they need for successful graduation. It’s a pathway for youth to welcome them back.”

One of the recent students helped by the Camps to College program who spoke Tuesday was Randy Dwayne May Jr., a senior at the William J. Johnston Community Day in San Pedro. He talked about being sent to multiple camps for multiple parole violations and a burglary charge.

“I remember a time when I saw five different judges and had five different probation officers, it was crazy,” Randy said. “It was the bad influences in my neighborhood that got me making bad choices. People who were supposed to be my friends just weren’t looking out for me.”

He credits his LA Unified counselor, Michael Hinckley, with keeping a check on him, and he just completed the last of four classes he needed to graduate.

“Now I can graduate at the end of the year, and they talked to me about staying on the right track,” Randy said. “Being in the program keeps my mind off things from my neighborhood, and I feel supported and safe.”

He said this stretch of time since his probation ended in November “is the longest I’ve been out of camp for a while.” He wants to join the military and then train to be a probation officer.

His counselor said, “I give Randy full credit for what he accomplished. He went to camps three times and still strived to get a high school diploma even after he turned 18 so he can do something great in life.”

Right now, the program has three full-time counselors, six placement counselors in probation camps and six ongoing counselors. When the program expands in August, it will do so with the existing staff.

“We want to eliminate all the barriers that may keep the students from succeeding, and so we work with the entire family,” Torres said. The program also involves training with the parents and provides youth transportation to the school if necessary.

Helene Cameron, principal of Central High School/Tri C and who has had students in the program, said it helps the students beyond graduation. “This provides new opportunities and ideas for the next part of their lives.”

Torres recounted one student who called her up and asked for help after being in five different camps. She helped him figure out what credits he needed, and he asked, “Can I walk across the stage with a cap and gown?” After completing the coursework, he recently came into the office to get his diploma, she said, because he will be in Central High’s graduation ceremony.

“We like seeing the county mental health services, probation and all these different agencies come together to see fewer kids in camp and more at graduation,” said board member Garcia, who helped push for the program. “We like leading and learning. Well done!”

The report, which highlights how many students are on track to complete their “A through G” courses required for graduation, shows that since the end of the fall semester, every traditional high school in the district not on a 4×4 block schedule has improved its projected completion rate. (Statistics on the handful of schools on the non-traditional 4×4 schedule, which allows students to take more classes, will be more accurately compiled after March 21.)

The school-by-school breakdowns were put together in part so that the district can flood extra resources to the schools that need it most and have helped identify schools that will take part in a special credit recovery session over spring break, according to Carol Alexander, director of the district’s A-G Intervention and Support.

“We are piloting some different programs and looking out right now, as we pilot these, we are really seeking out best practices and learning from the field what’s working and not working,” Alexander said.

Broken down by board district, the report gives each school a color coding of red, yellow or green, with green indicating a completion rate of over 70 percent, yellow indicating a completion rate of 69 to 50 percent, and red indicating a completion rate of less than 50 percent. As of Feb. 29, 63 schools with a traditional schedule were marked green, 42 were yellow and four were red.

All had made improvements since the fall, and some with dramatic results. For example, the Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academies Los Angeles River School jumped from a red 42 percent to 69 percent, and Sun Valley High from 32 percent to 60 percent.

“We are looking at matching if not increasing the graduation rate we experienced last year,” Alexander said.

Click here to see a school-by-school breakdown by board district: BD1, BD2, BD3, BD4, BD5, BD6 and BD7.

During the upcoming spring break, 12 schools that are either in the red or low-yellow category will be organizing a special credit recovery session offered through the adult education department and also paid for through its budget, and not through the $15 million credit recovery program. Other high schools will also be offering special spring break credit recovery sessions through the $15 million program, Alexander said.

“Across the board, all of our high schools are putting their arms around our students and utilizing spring break,” Alexander said.

In the report,  LA Unified’s Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson pointed to the “personalized” approach the district has been taking to A-G completion, meaning each school has an A-G report on each student and has contacted each student off track to offer corrective credit recovery options.

“I want to underscore that the personalization of efforts with our leaders, teachers and counselors is what is improving the opportunities for the class of 2016,” Gipson wrote.

The district’s massive credit recovery program was enacted this school year to help counter-balance a graduation crisis that would have likely occurred without it. This year is the first graduating class that will need to fulfill a lineup of courses called “A through G” that make students eligible for acceptance to admission to California’s public universities if they get a “C” grade or higher.

As a result of the higher standards, the projected graduation rate this October was 49 percent. Around the same time the district began to offer seniors special credit recovery courses — many of them online — that help them make up credits they previously failed through an accelerated program taken during free periods, after school, on weekends and on breaks.

Due to the success of the credit recovery program, the projected graduation rate has jumped officially to 63 percent, with district officials predicting last year’s record-high rate of 74 percent will likely be matched or exceeded.

Despite its success, the credit recovery program is not without its detractors, as some academic scholars and institutions are questioning the rigor and value of the courses. Gipson has defended the value of the courses as academically sound.

The news of the potentially record-breaking graduation rate came mere weeks after a projection in January showed only 54 percent of seniors were on pace to complete their “A though G” course requirements for graduation. Within a month, the district said that number had jumped to 63 percent and was expected to climb to 80 percent, in large part because of its new $15 million credit recovery program.

While district officials and some board members are saluting the credit recovery program, some academic scholars and institutions are skeptical of online credit recovery programs, saying they are an easy way to boost graduation rates without boosting student learning.

“It looks very fishy,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an editor of Education Next and research fellow at the Hoover Institution. “I think that we all need to be extremely skeptical that [LA Unified] can make that amount of progress in such a short amount of time and have it be meaningful.”

In the credit recovery program, seniors without enough credits to graduate retake classes during free periods, after school, on Saturdays and during the winter break. Many of the courses are online and have either a teacher running the class along with a computer program — known as blended learning — or an all-online course known as virtual learning. One online program in wide use by the district, Edgenuity, has students taking eight five-hour sessions online. If students prove proficiency with the material they receive a “C” grade. A’s and B’s aren’t an option.

LA Unified leaders, including Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson, defended the credit recovery program as academically sound.

“Whether it’s online or any other credit recovery course, it’s the same. It is still an LA Unified teacher working with LA Unified students,” Gipson told a group of reporters on Feb. 23 after she made a presentation to the school board about the credit recovery program. Gipson also said the district had worked with California universities and colleges to make sure the online credit recovery programs are approved by them.

But Petrilli and others question the academic value of online credit recovery courses. A report in September issued by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, was highly critical.

“This doesn’t come close to passing the smell test,” Petrilli said. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen all across the country urban districts get very excited about credit recovery programs and we have very little confidence that they are maintaining academic standards while catching kids up. It looks like a very rational but dishonest response to accountability systems that are now holding schools and districts accountable for increasing their high school graduation rates.”

A 2012 report by the Center for Public Education pointed to a lack of overall regulation of credit recovery programs, as well as a lack of any full academic study of their effectiveness. The report found that credit recovery “is a highly decentralized, unregulated and under-researched dropout prevention initiative. There is little information on enrollment numbers or effectiveness. So far, credit recovery programs have not been evaluated for rigor or equal access either.”

The report also said the number of district-initiated online learning programs is unknown and “there is no coherent definition emerging among states that cite credit recovery programs in statutes or administrative code.”

With LA Unified set to potentially break its graduation rate by riding the back of its credit recovery program, more critics are taking notice. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board joined the ranks of the skeptics recently, saying, “Some legitimate questions are now being raised about whether all these students have truly mastered the material that had previously eluded them.”

After Gipson’s progress report on the credit recovery program to the LA Unified school board’s Committee of the Whole on Feb. 23, board members had mostly positive things to say. Only board member Monica Ratliff raised any questions, saying, “Are these credit recovery courses really rigorous A through G courses? How do we know? What’s our evidence? And are we making sure that the ultimate diploma is the same for everyone?”

Petrilli pointed to a lack of outside studies of online credit recovery programs, and that most of the evidence of their effectiveness comes from the companies that make the programs. Edgenuity’s web page, for example, contains many reports highlighting how the program has helped districts around the country boost graduation rates. Petrilli said these online programs are injecting vendors into the setting of academic graduation standards like never before.

“I think there needs to be an external exam, external to the school and external to the vendor that the kid can in fact show that he has mastered algebra II or whatever it is,” Petrilli said. “But when the assessment is embedded in the program, it is the vendor’s own program, and it’s all controlled by the vendor and the district, there is no way to ensure some measure of quality control or academic standards. I think we are further degrading the high school diploma, and we don’t have a good way of knowing if the diploma LAUSD is handing out is going to mean anything.”

Mike Szymanski contributed to this article.