Former dropouts love our online learning program — but we can do even better

From teachers to technical support, American Academy students gave their online program high marks when surveyed by Washington State’s Digital Learning Department.

The recently released survey results show that nearly nine out of every 10 members of The American Academy’s student body — mostly dropouts and other studentsat risk of dropping out — report being satisfied with the program.

And when asked to rate the school on a scale of one to five stars, the overwhelming majority gave the program full points. Overall, The American Academy’s students gave the program 4.4 out of 5 stars.

“With the American Academy, I always get the help I need either from my online mentor or my local mentor, who could not be nicer or easier to get along with,” one student reported in the survey. “My teacher is always more than willing to help. I am very impressed with this program and wish I had found it sooner.”

“Everyone who helped me through this process made it much better for me to feel like I was accomplishing something,” another student wrote in the survey. “So thank you, American Academy, for giving me a second chance at a better future."

That’s music to our ears.

There are many reasons why our students weren't getting what they needed from a traditional school setting — and a lot of those reasons are very much unrelated to school. Students leave because they are parenting and cannot afford daycare, because they need to work to help support their families or because they live far from school and cannot afford transportation.

We work with school districts that want to address those situations — and the Washington survey results tell us that, together, we are succeeding to do just that.

That feels good. And we think it’s a real testament to the Washington state school leaders who stepped up and said, ‘we’re going to find a way to serve these students.’

But you know what? There’s room for improvement, too.

We know that we can do more to help districts support at-risk students — and we are striving to do just that.

We’d like to think that’s what has made The American Academy so successful, because we don’t stop at ‘good enough’ and we won’t stop at anything short of excellence — which for us means one simple thing: No dropouts.

That might seem an impossible goal, but as our school principal, Deborah O’Brien says, “When you see how hard these students work and how much it means to them to get a second chance, you can’t help but believe.”

Rebekah Richards and Gregg Rosann are chief academic officer and president, respectively, of The American Academy, which works with school districts nationwide to get dropouts back on track to earning a diploma. For more information about The American Academy, which sponsors this blog, visit NoDropouts.com.

To read more comments from American Academy students, visit the Washington Digital Learning Department's student satisfaction survey