Dozens of struggling city high schools allowed students to use a mishmash of makeup assignments — sometimes requiring little or no work — to earn credits for classes they initially flunked, sources say and data show.
For the first time, the Department of Education has made credit-recovery data publicly available by school — and it shows nearly 40 schools awarded between 5 percent and 31 percent of their credits to kids through makeup work in 2011-12, while close to three dozen gave between 5 percent and 46 percent of their credits that way the previous school year.
Most credit-recovery programs occur over the summer, when students try to learn the course work that eluded them during the year.
But many shortcut programs also cropped up after the department started using credit accumulation as a factor in grading schools in 2007 — putting pressure on them to come up with quick fixes for credit shortages.
“It’s a big issue at the school . . . the reason the principal does this is to make our school look good on our progress report,” said a former teacher at the Academy for Language and Technology in The Bronx, where 13 percent of credits came from makeup work in 2011-12.
The ex-teacher said that students would use an online program called Apex to read passages and answer simple questions — but that no one would prevent them from looking up the answers.
“They just accumulate easy credits rather than learn anything,” the former teacher said.
At Mott Hall V HS in The Bronx, a shocking 46 percent of all credits were granted through makeup programs in 2010-11, while the now-closed Pacific HS in Brooklyn awarded nearly 31 percent of credits through credit recovery the year after.
Although there’s no proof of wrongdoing at those particular schools, a slew of complaints at other schools prompted the department to crack down on the abuse in 2012.
At Lehman HS in The Bronx, teachers complained that kids had been given credits in gym simply for distributing student IDs to their classmates.
And at Bronx Health Sciences HS in Baychester, students were awarded credits for a half year’s worth of work in just 10 days — the equivalent of 7 1/2 hours of class time per course.
Department officials defended the program and said their clamp-down was prompted by the wide discrepancy among programs, not because the system was being abused.
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich