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Teachers association urges district review of Edmentum credit‑recovery pathway
Summary
A teachers association representative told the board that students are gaming the Edmentum credit-recovery system—purposefully failing courses to retake them online and quickly raise grades for extracurricular eligibility—and urged policy changes including grade caps or credit/no‑credit options.
At the June 10 Merced Union High School District meeting, a representative for the teachers association urged district leaders to review Edmentum, the district’s online credit-recovery platform, saying teachers have reported students intentionally failing courses to use the system to inflate grades and regain athletic eligibility.
The association speaker said a teacher had described a student who “rushed through his final purposely … to fail my class so he could take it on Edmentum because he needs a higher grade in this class to raise his GPA so he could play football.” The association representative read the email into the record and proposed policy options including making Edmentum credit/no‑credit, capping the letter grade attainable through the platform at a C, or distinguishing Edmentum course results on transcripts.
Board members acknowledged the concern and trustees asked administration to study the issue. Mrs. Ballinger said she has begun collecting example policies from other districts and district data to bring back recommendations. She told the board she would take a deeper dive into how the current structure might undermine core classroom instruction and whether changes could better align remediation with academic integrity.
The teachers association representative said the district was not asking to eliminate credit recovery but to strengthen it so it does not undercut semester‑long instruction, naming options already considered by staff and trustees.
Next steps: administration will analyze possible policy changes and report back to the board; no formal policy change was adopted at the June 10 meeting.
