The Department of Education pledged to crack down on abuse of “credit recovery” to graduate failing students, but records obtained by The Post show that kids at one scandal-scarred school are taking as many as nine courses 🐓each this summer.
The practice allows students to mak💯e up courses they failed or did not complete — but limits them to making up no more than three credits during their entire academic careers.
The records show that rule is being ignored at William Cullen Bryant HS in Queens. Of 118 students taking online courses at Bryant — alma mater of “Fail Me!” graduate Melissa Mejia — 41 of them are taking four or more.
Most New York City students earn 10 to 12 credits for their normal school-year course load. But one 𒁃Bryant student is taking nine courses over the summer — making up the equivalen🌟t of nearly an entire year’s worth of work in just six weeks.
Bryant summer-school student Eddie Contreras, 18, who is taking a gym class, said Tuesday the online courses provided by APEX Learning — which are also used during the school year — were notoriously easy to beat.
“I’m no🌃t going to lie — eve♐ryone cheats during the APEX online classes,” he said.
Contreras, who will be a senior in September, said he took an English ꧒class using APEX.
“Just like everyone📖 else, I would just Google the answers and fill them in,” he said. “The whole point of the program was to use the iPads to take the class, but nobody is really learning anything because everyone is cheating. That’s how most seniors graduate.”
Senior Sebastian Cru🌺z, who is taking seven online classes, said he was scrambling to graduate because he wasn’t assigned the proper courses when he moved꧟ from his native Colombia in 2013.
His sum♒m♓er load included four English classes, he said.
“W🍃hen I first transferred here they wasted six months of my time. They had me doing nothing, taking classes I didn’t need,” he said in Spanish.
“I have 50 credits now. You need 44 to g♏raduate but theও ones I have don’t apply towards graduation so I’m taking the classes I need now,” he said.
A DOE spokesman said 15 Bryant seniors were taking more than 💮three online courses.
The spokesman said the classes were being made up for a variety reasons other than failurﷺe, including illness.
About 70 of the students taking online courses are taking them not for credit but to prepare for exams, the spokesman 💧said. But the spokesman also said the entire matter had been referred to the special commissioner of investigation for city schools.