Summer 2019 High School Credit Recovery Briefing
for
Counselors, Administrators and Site Facilitators

Updated 6/11/19

A notice to students and parents: This information is intended for distribution to public school districts and may contain details that do not apply to your local district’s program.  If you are interested in enrolling in credit recovery courses with Montana Digital Academy, your first contact should be to the counseling department or administration of your local school to discuss what is available locally.  Credit recovery courses are not available to students independent of a school-based credit recovery program

(Looking for original credit information?  Click here.)

Program Details

Important Notes

• SUMMER SURVEY REQUIRED: Before May 15th, PLEASE be sure to fill out our program survey if you are delivering credit recovery program options in your local school this summer.  This will assist us in planning and also allow MTDA to direct summer inquiries from our teaching and support staff to the appropriate person during the summer.  That survey is here:

Summer Program Survey

• Summer does not lessen the requirement for local school support.  All assessments MUST be locally proctored to qualify for the delivery of credit, no exceptions.  If a student can’t not be present on your campus, they do not qualify for credit recovery services.

Schedule

• Enrollment begins: April, 8, 2019 (please note: do not enroll students until a maximum of 48 hours before students start the course; inactive students are monitored and dropped from the program); live coach grading and support will not begin until June 10th)
• Summer staffing begins: June 10th (before this day, assignments will only be graded overnight)
• Enrollment ends: July 15th (open enrollment ends July 15th, after that day, contact support to discuss new enrollments)
• Last day for Summer 2019: July 26th OR THE LAST DAY OF LOCAL SUPPORT (if earlier).  It is the school’s responsibility to communicate the calendar to your students and parents.  Please drop any student that is incomplete after your local school program ends for the summer.
• Late finish deadline (to account for illness or other personal situations): August 2nd (no extensions available after this date for any circumstances)

Orientation

• All students new to the MTDA credit recovery program must complete the mandatory Orientation program.  The program is called “Credit Recovery Orientation” in GeniusSIS and must receive a “pass” to be able to enroll in content specific programs.  The orientation is open now.  Once a student takes and completes the orientation, they do not need to complete it again.
• The orientation program is approximately 2-3 hours of engagement time, dependent on student skill, reading level and motivation.  Students that do not complete orientation in a reasonable amount of time should be considered high need enrollments and provided additional direct support locally.

Registration

• Please review our student registration page in the Site Facilitator handbook for information on data collection and student registration.  That document is here: link.

Program Information

To facilitate forward progression of summer program students, MTDA will adapt our labor model to provide live coaching services during most of the school day.  Our teaching staff will work to turn around mastery assignments as quickly as possible in the order they are received.

At this point, our intention is to provide those services from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday-Friday.

Course Availability

MTDA offers our core catalog of most-requested classes in the summer format.

English/Language Arts

• English I A
• English I B
• English II A
• English II B
• English III A
• English III B
• English IV A
• English IV B

Science

• Earth Science A
• Earth Science B
• Biology A
• Biology B

Social Studies

• Geography A
• Geography B
• World History A
• World History B
• US History A
• US History B
• Government A
• Government B

Mathematics

All MTDA mathematics semester-long courses are divided into two parts, Part 1 and Part 2.  Students must pass both parts for a recommendation of credit.

• Pre-Algebra A
• Pre-Algebra B
• Algebra I A
• Algebra I B
• Geometry A
• Geometry B
• Algebra II A
• Algebra II B

Health

• Health (One Semester)

Program Planning Notes

• Local program support required: As during the school year, it is a minimum requirement that students complete assessments in a school-proctored environment.  Under no circumstances should students be given passwords to take assessments.  No exceptions will be granted to individual students or schools for this requirement.  Students that take assessments without required proctors will lose the credit recommendation from MTDA.
• Time Commitment: The summer program is the same format and curriculum as the school year, utilizing a mastery-based learning environment to provide a flexible but rigorous environment.  Based on statistics and analysis from Fall and Spring data, courses take the typical student 50-60 hours to complete the summer program and format, though we do see extremes in both directions.  Students that come to the program with low reading skills or lacking self-regulation may take much longer.  The course requirements are not negotiable.

End of Semester Information and Procedures

The Summer 2019 High School Credit Recovery program ends on July 26, 2019 at noon.  Please view the steps below for local support and/or site facilitators to help MTDA close out the semester.

First, if you have any student enrolled in a credit recovery course that is no longer attending school, inactive, or otherwise not going to finish up, please put in a drop request for those students as soon as possible. This action helps the MTDA staff focus our attention on students that are active and attempting to finish up the course.  If your program ends before the end of our summer availability, please put in a drop request for those students before you close shop for the summer.

Second, if you have a student that is active and needs extra time to complete the course, you may request an extension until August 2, 2019, our late finish deadline. The late finish deadline is designed to account for any circumstance that might have impacted performance in this the course this semester.  The August 2, 2019 deadline is the final deadline under any circumstances, no exceptions.

You may request an extension with this form:

Summer 2019 CR Extension Request Form

Note: All extension requests are granted. However, you must request the extension by Monday, July 29, 2019, at 5 pm. Otherwise, enrollments will be dropped. Again, this helps our staff focus on active enrollments in active programs.

Third, please note that a student must complete the entire course to qualify for credit. MTDA teachers or support staff are not able to excuse assignments due to pending deadlines.

Please note that we will not contact students about this deadline or the extension, as each program is different in the summer.  We rely 100% on facilitators to connect with your students to discuss the end-of-session schedule.

If you have any questions, we welcome connecting with you via our support desk, support@montanadigitalacademy.org.