Online Courses Are Harming the Students Who Need the Most Help
The negative consequences may not be obvious at first, because the pass rates in these courses are very high
and students who take them tend to graduate from high school instead of flunking out.
Yet in high schools across the country, students who are struggling in traditional classrooms are increasingly steered into online courses.
A study in Maine and Vermont examined the effect of online courses on eighth graders
with strong math skills in schools that didn’t offer face-to-face algebra classes.
The results were clear: Students in the online algebra courses learned much less than those who worked with a teacher in a classroom.
