Online learning falls short without teacher-student interaction

A study by two prestigious research groups found that Chicago public high school students who failed Algebra 1 and retook the course online were less likely to pass than students who retook the course in a traditional classroom setting.

The major study raises questions about relying heavily on expensive online credit recovery for struggling students, a strategy that has gained traction nationally. In Chicago, CPS paid two companies more than $600,000 last year to provide credit recovery and online coursework, the bulk of which went to K12 Virtual Schools, LLC, which owns the company whose product was the subject of the study. (CPS did not provide information on how many students take online courses for credit recovery each year.)