Desperately short on teachers, Richland 1 school district has turned to an online learning platform called Edgenuity for help.
According to the parents of high school-age children enrolled in classes without a certified teacher, students are being asked to use the self-paced software to teach themselves subjects like algebra, earth science and Spanish with minimal adult oversight and predictably poor results.
“They watch a video, take a little quiz and they get a grade,” said Kristen, the parent of a Richland 1 high school student without an algebra teacher who requested that her last name not be used for fear of blowback from the district. “There’s been no one actively teaching their classes. And they also therefore have no paper study guides or worksheets that they could bring home and study. Once they take a test, that’s it.”
While many of the children are making A’s in their Edgenuity classes, parents fear they’re missing out on foundational skills and may need tutoring down the road .
“I think to him this is an easy A,” Kristen said of her son. “He just doesn’t understand the ramifications of this.”
In a recent interview with the newspaper, Richland 1 officials said they didn’t have data on the number of students who use Edgenuity for primary instruction, also called credit accrual, but claimed the practice was rare.
Emails obtained by The State Media Co. show that at least nine substitute teacher-led courses at A.C. Flora High School, including several math and science classes, used Edgenuity as primary instruction for at least a portion of the current school year. Parents said substitute teachers supervise the classes while students complete their online assignments, but that the subs are rarely, if ever, able to answer content-related questions. The prevalence of the virtual program’s use in other Richland 1 schools is not clear, but Flora is not unique with respect to its teacher vacancies.
Kevin Hasinger, Richland 1’s executive director of secondary education, said that when students without teachers are enrolled in Edgenuity, a cooperating teacher is assigned to support them and an assistant principal follows their progress.
“We don’t kind of leave them out on their own just on that online platform,” Hasinger said. “We also provide them support and very close monitoring.”
Several parents interviewed by the newspaper tell a different story. They say there’s been minimal communication from school officials and no one their children can consistently turn to for instructional help.
Kristen, the parent of the algebra student, said an assistant principal responsible for entering students’ Edgenuity grades sporadically emailed lists of assignments for them to complete, but had no involvement with instruction.
In an email obtained by The State, the assistant principal wrote that the program would guide students and assess their understanding of concepts. Students who were struggling and in need of help could attend either peer lunch tutoring sessions or after-school tutoring sessions.
But the advertised tutoring sessions were not tailored to students attempting to teach themselves through Edgenuity, parents said. They were simply general tutoring sessions available to all students at the school.
Edgenuity and programs like it have historically been used by schools to help students who failed classes and required remediation, processes known as credit and content recovery.
The product started seeing an increase in usage about a decade ago — around the time its executive vice president got swept up in a public corruption scandal that brought down the Alabama Speaker of the House — but didn’t gain real name recognition until 2020, when pressed into duty during the pandemic as the primary vehicle for remote instruction in some school districts.
Imagine Learning, the education technology company that makes Edgenuity, bills its product as a “standards-aligned digital curriculum that provides personalized learning for students in grades 6-12 with over 400 rich and rigorous courses.”
Data on the efficacy of credit recovery software is mixed and platforms like Edgenuity have come under criticism over the years for the ease with which students can game their algorithms to ace assignments without actually learning the material.
Tens of thousands of schools nationwide, including virtually every district in South Carolina, use Edgenuity or one of its competitors for self-paced online learning.
Most districts use the programs for credit or content recovery. But an increasing number of districts that are struggling with teacher vacancies have turned to the platforms as a primary source of instruction, S.C. Department of Education spokesman Jason Raven said.
The department is not opposed to districts using virtual platforms for initial credit accrual, he said, but discourages online instruction as a one-size-fits-all replacement for in-person learning.
Raven said the department was working with the state Education Oversight Committee to study the effectiveness of credit recovery programs like Edgenuity and anticipates its findings will inform best practices for the use of such tools in the future.
He declined to comment specifically on Richland 1’s use of Edgenuity.
The company itself did not respond to a request for comment, but its vice president for instructional design and learning science told NBC News several years ago that Edgenuity wasn’t designed to be used without live teacher involvement .
Parents report lack of oversight, grade inflation
Richland 1 has used Edgenuity for a decade, primarily for credit and content recovery, but also occasionally for credit accrual, said Hasinger, the district’s executive director of secondary education.
He considers all three uses appropriate, but if given the option said he would always prefer to use live teachers who can build personal relationships with students.
“There truly is no replacement for a certified teacher,” Hasinger said. “But to that end, we have found that the Edgenuity system is quite successful in preparing students to find success.”
He acknowledged there had been an uptick recently in the district’s use of the platform for primary instruction, but said it still constituted an extremely small number of cases.
When used in that way, primarily due to staffing shortages or to meet the needs of students who have been out of school and need additional support, it’s generally only with lower-level classes and electives that don’t have high stakes end-of-course exams, Hasinger said.
End-of-course exams are statewide assessments that South Carolina high school students are required to take in certain core courses, such as Algebra 1 and Biology 1, that count for 20% of a student’s grade in the class.
Hasinger could think of only one example of Edgenuity being used in a class with an end-of-course test, but said in that case the school had developed an “extremely robust human resources plan” that involved tutoring from multiple teachers with content area expertise and an assistant principal who checked students’ progress weekly.
Kristen, the parent whose son is currently taking algebra through Edgenuity, said that did not describe her son’s experience.
The school administrator who originally sent parents weekly reminders about their children’s assignments hasn’t communicated with them since the second quarter, she said. And while other math teachers at the school covered the class early in the year, it’s primarily been overseen by a series of substitute teachers who can’t answer content questions.
A few weeks ago, Kristen said she asked that study materials used in another section of algebra be provided to children in her son’s class, but that hasn’t happened yet.
“I just worry that this is kind of the foundation of all the math he’s going to need,” she said. “According to him, they sit in class and don’t do anything but play on (their cell) phones. Even with a substitute teacher, they’re just a warm body in the classroom.”
The lack of oversight many Richland 1 students and parents report as being typical of Edgenuity-driven classes fosters an environment where cheating flourishes.
Numerous students, parents and teachers told The State they suspected cheating occurred frequently in classes that used Edgenuity and said many students received grades they hadn’t earned legitimately.
Richland 1 board member Barbara Weston said she’s long heard complaints about the ease with which students teaching themselves through Edgenuity cheat on exams.
“They know how to get around the system, and they find it demeaning,” said Weston, a former Richland 1 teacher.
Hasinger, Richland 1’s executive director of secondary education, acknowledged that cheating occurs in Edgenuity classes, but denied it was widespread or more prevalent in self-paced online courses than classes with live teachers.
“I think it’s fair to say that there have been some young men and women who have been successful cheating throughout history,” he said. “I certainly do not mean to try to imply that there’s absolutely no cheating going on (in Edgenuity), but I would not imply that in any course anywhere in the world.”
According to emails obtained by The State, some instances of grade inflation and manipulation in Edgenuity appear to have been initiated by school administrators.
In one exchange from late September, an assistant principal at A.C. Flora High School messaged the parents of students enrolled in Edgenuity classes for earth science, chemistry, anatomy/physiology and Spanish 1, 2 and 3 about the due dates for assignments that would factor into first quarter grades.
“Because students are working on their own,” the email reads, “their grade will be bumped up to ensure all students have the opportunity to do well in their respective course(s).”
Ashley Jaillette, the mother of two freshmen at Flora who both got stuck in Edgenuity classes this year due to teacher vacancies, said the email didn’t sit well with her.
About a month later, Jaillette grew even more concerned when an assistant principal changed her son’s grade to an A from a B after she requested a sitdown to discuss his performance in the class.
“I complained about his first semester grade because it was bringing down his average, and without question, they just bumped it up 10 points,” she said.
A.C. Flora email exchange by Zak Koeske on Scribd
Administrators at A.C. Flora declined to comment on the situation and directed the newspaper to contact the district office.
When asked about grade inflation and manipulation in Edgenuity, Hasinger said the district had received no reports of either, but advised anyone with concerns to contact his office.
“I’m not aware of any instances where grades are elevated based on parental complaints,” he said. “At all.”
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