Are high school seniors Googling their way to graduation?

Wilson says Apex records don't tell the whole story. In credit recovery, students adhere to a "blended learning" model that includes both online coursework through Apex and tutoring or classroom instruction. Students pass classes by mastering each individual skill or academic standard the class is designed to teach, he explains.

 "If a student obtains an 80 percent or better on the assessment for any given standard, then the student is considered 'proficient,' meaning the student has knowledge to pass the standard and move on to the next standard," he says.

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Pat Salas former North High School counselor, says credit recovery doesn't work like it should.

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More About

• Antwan Wilson
• Denver Public Schools
• Nancy Werkmeister
• Engagement Center
• Blair Brown

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In other words, it's possible that the students did the remaining coursework with a tutor or a teacher. As for allowing students to take the finals without completing their coursework, Wilson doesn't see a problem with it. "The purpose of a final is to measure a student's mastery," he says. "If we have students who have the ability to master the final but who don't have the ability to earn credit for that, I'd question the logic of that."

Principal Salem adds that many of the students at North are failing because they are missing class rather than failing tests. In fact, in 2009 he decreed that only students with 85 percent attendance records could participate in graduation ceremonies. (See Patricia Calhoun's "Send North High's principal to detention," May 14, 2009.) That policy is no longer in effect.

And Wilson also points out that regular students are allowed to pass with a grade of 60 percent, while credit recovery students must earn an 80 percent on an Apex final.

"If a student gets an 80 percent on an algebra final but we don't give them credit, that seems illogical," Wilson says. "I know people might say, 'But what about the assignments they were supposed to do?' The assignments are practice. The assessment is the test of their knowledge. In terms of preparing them for college, we're not preparing them to know how to do homework. I know when I was in college, I didn't have a lot of homework. It was about being able to produce papers and take exams."

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But data suggests that North's students aren't prepared for college.

A recent report by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education shows that in 2010, 72 percent of North graduates needed to take at least one remedial class in college. The four Denver high schools with the highest number of graduates taking remedial classes in college — North, Montbello (72 percent), Abraham Lincoln (79 percent) and West (91 percent) — all have credit recovery Engagement Centers.

This spring, the number of North students on track to graduate seemed to be in constant flux. In mid-April, 48 were on track to graduate, according to school officials. Forty students were failing one class that was required to graduate, according to minutes from an April meeting of the North Collaborative School Committee (CSC) and another twenty were failing two required classes. Thirty more in the Engagement Center were also on track to graduate.

Those statistics prompted Jennifer Draper Carson, the chairwoman of the CSC, to write an editorial for the North Denver Tribune questioning what it would take to attract more students to North and make the school successful. "With graduation scheduled for May 23, school administrators reported this week that only 48 of 123 seniors are currently on track to graduate," she wrote. "Yes, you read that right — 48 out of 123. How many of those graduating seniors will have the skills needed to avoid remedial courses?"

Three weeks after she wrote the piece, which ran on April 21, Draper Carson says she was told by administrators at North that the number of students on track to graduate had increased to 92. "They didn't tell me why there was such a big jump," she says. Their explanation, according to Draper Carson? "They just made up their credits."

Late last week, North reported that the number had jumped again, to 111.

While no one is arguing that more students graduating high school is a bad thing, current and former North employees worry that the process set up to help them do so is doing more harm than good.

"What sucks is that there are kids working their butts off for a diploma to mean something and there are kids getting diplomas from North who have earned every single credit on there plus more," says Brown. "Then a bunch of other kids get the same diploma, and it devalues it."

She adds, "I'd hate for...people to look at a transcript and say, 'Oh, they went to North? They'll give a diploma to anyone.'"