TUCSON, Arizona (13 News) – More surprising revelations from former Tucson USD high school teachers about the district’s credit recovery courses.

They claim the district wrongfully allowed students suffering from diarrhea to take these courses in order to graduate.

Credit recovery courses are offered in schools nationwide to help students re-educate if they fail a course.

TUSD has implemented guidelines and strict rules.

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However, the former teachers claim that in some cases the district did not follow its own rules.

High school teacher Kyle Shreve described it as frustrating.

A few days before graduation, a high school graduate failed after submitting only one assignment all year.

“Over the course of a semester, they had over 30 absences,” Shreve said. “So they weren’t even in school.”

A credit recovery rule states: “Course registrations will not be assigned within six weeks of May graduation.”

Shreve said he didn’t see that as an option, but colleagues asked him to allow the student to take an emergency CR course so he could walk on graduation day.

He reluctantly compromised.

“I expected the student to work at least 10 to 15 hours, go through the curriculum, take the tests and exams,” he said. “I didn’t expect that once the grade was approved after graduation and everything, once I find out that the student only worked three hours on the whole thing, I wouldn’t realize in hindsight.”

Three hours, he said, to complete an 80-hour course.

“It didn’t even require blood, sweat and tears from the students,” Shreve said. “It was just like the students got what they wanted, they can graduate and it was no big deal.”

The issue was so important to Shreve that he took a course himself.

It took him an hour to complete one unit “just to complete the tests and exams,” Shreve said.

He explained: “I just read through it. It’s unlikely that they could have solved those equations without additional help. If you go to Google itself, there’s an AI voice-over where you can, for example, click on a voice link and then have Google read the questions out to you, and Google will answer the questions for you. All the questions are just online.”

It is a similar complaint that former high school teacher Lysa Nabours filed with the board a year ago.

She explained her concerns about all credit recovery courses in an email.

She wrote: “A student may fail a course” and “retake an abbreviated version.”

Nabours said: “There are some courses that students complete in two days. In the past, we’ve had students who completed an entire course in three hours. How can that be a real course? And we give them a grade for it.”

This CR rule states that students seeking to improve their grade must repeat the course in person and not in an APEX credit improvement course.

Nabours said the district tightened loan recovery rules last fall, “but I think when the district realized students weren’t progressing fast enough, they relaxed the rules.”

She told the board, “The district recommends that teachers not look too closely.”

State Inspector Tom Horne called it “plain fraud.”

He said it was “completely irrational” to send students through CR courses regardless of whether they learned anything or not.

“I could imagine a summer course where students would have to pass an exam, so they would have to have learned the material, but certainly not in a few days,” Horne said.

13 Investigates asked Val Romero, board member of the Tucson USD, if he thought it was a scam.

Romero replied, “Yes. That’s not fair to the student who is doing all the work. I agree that’s how it should be, if they’re making up credits, there should be a pass/fail rate. They’re not competent, now they’re making up credits. We need to change our fundamentals.”

Romero said he discussed his concerns about the courses with TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo.

Cavazos: “And his answer?”

Romero: “He would get me more information about it.”

Cavazos: “How long ago was that?”

Romero: “It was a few months ago.”

Cavazos: “What do you think about it? What would you like to do?”

Romero said, “I need to gather enough information so that I can assign someone to present this to us as a board. What will my other board members do? Will they support this too, because I’m only one of five?”

“You talk about schools cheating the public, and that’s terrible,” Horne said. “And we have to elect school board members to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s really where the power lies in our society … at the school board member level.”

13 Investigates reached out to the district to conduct a live interview with Trujillo.

The district has just issued another statement.

The district spokesman wrote: “The Tucson Unified School District will revise the High School Credit Recovery Expansion Program Manual this school year to improve our practices and ensure clearer alignment with our district policies..”

13 Investigates again reached out to the entire board and received no response other than from Romero and Sadie Shaw.

Shaw’s full statement:

“I have received feedback from teachers expressing concern that our credit remediation system is being abused by students who are failing due to chronic absence and failed assignments. Many students have come to assume that they can catch up on their core subjects at the end of the year and receive a grade in just one week. This current approach, in my view, inadvertently encourages poor behavior. I believe that students who fail a subject should only be entitled to a pass/fail option if they are using the credit remediation system.

To address this issue, I created the Alternative Education Advisory Committee to review and update the procedures of our alternative education programs, including credit recovery. Recently, the Board was informed that the Department of Curriculum and Instruction has established a committee to work with school staff to review credit recovery policies and procedures. We must make these adjustments quickly to ensure that our district’s culture promotes excellence, not misconduct.”

13 Investigations will continue to monitor developments.

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