Hello from Erica and Lily on Chalkbeat’s National desk. Sometimes we all need a do-over. But what are the implications when tens of thousands of students are using credit recovery programs to make it to graduation? That’s our big story this week — and we’d especially like to hear about your experiences with this issue.

Keep reading for that, plus a look at how teachers are handling the 25th anniversary of 9/11 for a generation of students born well after the attacks, the mixed messages from the new PISA test scores, the real reason one school district isn’t issuing laptops, and more.

And don’t forget to register for our event Oct. 1, where we’ll be talking about the competing pressures facing schools when it comes to ed tech and AI in the classroom.

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School districts want to do everything they can to get students in that cap and gown. And a key part of some districts’ strategy is credit recovery. This involves courses designed to help students who have fallen behind or failed courses catch up. Many school districts use software to offer compressed versions of classes like algebra or English language arts.

We crunched the numbers and found credit recovery enrollment grew by 13% between the 2017-18 and 2023-24 school years. Some of that growth can be explained by what happened smack dab in the middle of those years — the pandemic, which threw a lot of kids off track. Some districts, like Detroit and Philadelphia, say credit recovery helps reduce dropouts. 

But researchers and skeptics have argued that while these programs may help graduation rates tick up, they aren’t helping students learn the actual concepts in classes they failed.

But we think there’s a lot more to the story of credit recovery. We want to dive into this topic a lot more in the coming months. And we really want your feedback here. 

If you’re in education, particularly if you’re a teacher, and you’ve witnessed the rise of credit recovery, check out our survey to tell us how credit recovery works at your school or in your district. Have you ever taught a credit recovery course? How did it go? How did the students engage with the course material? And how do you think it’s affected students and teachers?

Read the full story here. 

The U.S. has moved up in international test score rankings, but largely because other countries are performing worse. The latest results of the international PISA test show a decline in U.S. math and reading scores, but the decline is less steep than that of other countries. There’s one asterisk: The organization that runs the test warned that because of incomplete responses from schools, the results may not tell the full story.

The American Psychological Association has weighed in on the ed tech debate — and it’s not in favor of blanket screen bans. In a new guidance document, the APA says technology can play a useful role in student learning. At the same time, it says a large portion of programs schools use today have limited educational value and may even be harming students. The organization calls on schools and vendors to commit to only using tools that have real evidence behind them. “To me, that doesn’t seem too much to ask,” the report’s lead author said.

School-level vaccine data can expose hidden outbreak risks, but whether you can find this information depends on where you live. School-level data can reveal pockets of low immunity where outbreaks are especially likely, even in communities where vaccination rates are generally high. Some states have easy-to-navigate public websites that help parents of immunocompromised children make informed decisions. Other states don’t make that information readily available even to public health officials, a Healthbeat analysis found. 

English teacher Nancy Re’s lessons on 9/11 are grounded in personal loss. Her brother-in-law died in the towers, and her neighborhood of Rockaway Beach in Queens is home to many firefighters. She starts the school year with books about 9/11 and transitions into a poetry unit for her fifth and sixth grade students.

“It does not matter what subject you teach, every teacher must address it, because that gives a strong message of its importance and how we can never forget,” she told Chalkbeat.

High school history teacher Jen Chapin also lost a friend in the attacks. But her lessons about 9/11 are grounded in historical context, stretching back to the Industrial Revolution, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and other events that shaped the relationship between the United States and the Middle East. 

This kind of analysis has not always been welcome in New York, with all the heightened emotions around the attack, Chapin said. “Today we have a chance to bring more big-picture, critical thinking to our work with students about the event.” 

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed more than 3,000 Americans and reshaped the country in ways big and small. Many teachers in American schools have watched the attacks move from current events to history, while others were not even born yet themselves. 

And of course, the students in their classrooms have no memories of 9/11. Young people described a complex web of emotions to the New York Times — longing for the supposed unity the country felt, numbness after childhoods marked by one mass shooting after another, resentment at discrimination and exclusion. 

That leaves teachers with the difficult task of deciding which parts of the story to tell to which age groups. An Associated Press analysis found at least 40 states either require or suggest that schools address 9/11 in some form, but expectations vary widely, as does implementation. 

“Even worse than getting started wrong or using inappropriate language is the total omission of telling the story,” Gordon Felt, whose brother Edward Felt died on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, told teachers in a training session this summer. “That’s our biggest fear.”

That’s the percentage of Americans who reported they are satisfied with K-12 education in the U.S., according to a new Gallup poll, a new low for the satisfaction rating. But 66% of parents said they were satisfied with their own child’s education. That kind of big split between national and local satisfaction is a common one.

That’s John Warren, of ARISE High School in Oakland, California, referencing the lengths educators are going in teaching the school’s phlebotomy certification program. Schools across the country are expanding career and technical education, where hands-on experience matters.