Does Online Credit Recovery in High School Support or Stymie Later Labor Market Success?

An emerging body of research links online credit recovery programs to rising high school graduation rates but does not find comparable increases in student learning. This study follows high school students who engaged in online credit recovery into the labor market to understand the longer-term implications of this growing educational trend. If online credit recovery contributes to high school completion and facilitates job entry, then participants in online credit recovery may have labor market outcomes that differ little relative to those recovering credits in traditional classroom settings. However, if online credit recovery courses are inferior in terms of the knowledge or skills they impart and that learning is critical to workforce success, then online credit recovery participants may earn less over time. The study findings suggest that high school students who participated in online credit recovery initially had earnings on par with those who did not recover course credits online, but a negative differential emerged between their earnings and the earnings of nonparticipants that grew over time. We found no evidence to suggest that students ever benefitted in the labor market from online credit recovery in high school.