St. Paul schools showcase successful hands-on credit recovery programs
Saint Paul Public Schools discussed the success of its experiential credit recovery programs at a March 16 meeting, highlighting how hands-on learning is helping struggling students catch up while improving their emotional well-being. The district and state officials explored how to expand these proven methods across Minnesota.
Saint Paul Public Schools has developed credit recovery programs that use real-world, experiential learning instead of traditional classroom instruction. These programs serve a diverse range of students, including those in special education and English language learners, and have produced measurable results in student engagement and social-emotional growth.
The programs have been funded through federal Emergency Relief funds—money provided to schools during the pandemic crisis. School officials described these federal dollars as crucial "seed money" that allowed them to launch and test the programs. Outdoor education components have been particularly effective, with speakers noting statistically significant improvements in students' emotional and social development.
Beyond Saint Paul's success, state officials indicated that Minnesota is working with the Legislature to evaluate and potentially scale these programs statewide. The goal is to replicate what's working in Saint Paul across other districts in the state. However, school leaders emphasized that long-term sustainability will depend on maintaining adequate student enrollment in the programs.
The discussion underscores a broader shift in education toward hands-on learning approaches, particularly for students who struggle in traditional settings. As federal pandemic relief funding winds down, the challenge ahead will be finding permanent funding sources to keep these programs running and expanding them to help more students succeed.
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we're really proud at the Department of Education of what St Paul public schools has been able to do with their Elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds really thinking about tying Credit Recovery opportunities for students able to learn core content in the classroom while also learning on the job real life situations through experiential learning for so many of our kids they need the credit because they didn't get it during the traditional way that it's taught so our program provides a different way for them to learn it provides them hands-on experience and really that connection between the content and an experience so they know why they're learning something experiential Credit Recovery serves an incredibly broad range of students a high number of special ed students High number of elll students and to ensure that we serve these students needs we create individualized programming to meet their needs so we have seen much higher increased engagement from last summer to this summer we made some changes to scheduling and teacher collaboration and this year like engagement is kind of through the roof what kids and I was like this in high school as well I did not like being in regular core classes because it had to me it had no real world connection this is allowing students to get a real world connection of why they need to know certain formulas how to calculate power how to figure out how fast something's going so they can apply to engineering principles I like how it's more handson and there's a lot more things I can do that compel me to do things like later in my life as education program manager one of the things I'm in charge of is our outdoor credit recovery program so what the research shows and what our own personal evaluations of our programs are showing is that students are growing statistically significant in social emotional areas and that is because our staff are engaging authentically with them promoting peer bonds using best practices that promote social emotional development the pandemic really turned education into a solo struggle for me as a student who has been in credit recovery and a person who is now on a credit recovery team I think it's so important because the people who are working on the team with the kids they're showing up every day because they love their job the credit recovery program really opened up a new world for me I've never really heard of outdoor education or considered anything past a traditional four-walled classroom so it really changed my trajectory of a learning environment I became interested in a world outdoors and so I felt like I now had a tangible path for my career and for my education the erer money was uh the seed money that allowed us to get programming like this off the ground and now student enrollment is the opportunity to keep things going from here on and sustain long term well in Minnesota we're always looking for shining stars and programs that we know work for kids and I think that was one of the real opportunities with Esser it gave our school communities across the state a chance to try new approaches new programs uh and an opportunity to then evaluate and look at what works and and look at what needs to be sustained and what we can scale and replicate right both within schools and across the the state and so uh through this process we've been able to work with the Minnesota Legislature to really dig deep into uh what we learned from the programming during Esser and think about what we can scale and replicate across the state
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