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