Following the introduction of the integrated math system in 2014, Roseville High School’s IM classes experienced a 21 percent the first term of IM2. Due to these high fail rate numbers, the district introduced a IM credit recovery class at Independence High School to help student’s D’s and F’s get back on track without having to dedicate another semester to the class.

Last school year, the quarter one fail rates were at 40.5% for IM1, 40.8% for IM2 and 21.8% for IM3. The fail rates dropped to 21.2% for IM1, 25% for IM2 and 20.3% for IM3 this year, after IM recovery courses were installed.

The credit recovery system at Independence was a course designed on blackboard. According to IM recovery student Tommy Bertoli, the idea of the course was designed to be self paced. Students are only required to go to class to take a chapter test or collect homework.

Bertoli finds the class at Independence easier as it gives him more time and freedom to work on his classwork.

“The class for me is a lot easier at Independence with it’s self paced course work compared to the IM at RHS which doesn’t give me enough time to learn.” Bertoli said.
Chloe Storrs, a current IM2 and credit recovery student likes how the course helped her realize her math skills.

“It’s helped me a lot because when I first took IM2, I wasn’t really into it and I didnt really wanted to be there and I didn’t pass, but with the credit recovery it made me see my potential more,” Storrs said.

Along with the credit recovery courses at Independence, integrated math teachers Levi Fletcher and Lisa Vaccaro decided to offer IM recovery courses at RHS. Fletcher and Vaccaro held interviews with students who would be potential candidates in taking the IM recovery classes, on site rather than taking it at Independence or on their own time outside of school.

“We interviewed kids we thought would be eligible retaking the class in the traditional format or the recovery format. We had them choose which format they preferred,” Vaccaro said. “It’s really hard to recover if you are gone one day a week or one day every other week, but because of the nature of our program they were still able to make progress because they picked up where they left off.”

Fletcher and Vaccaro decided to create the IM1 recovery class due to their personal experience of certain students who struggle in the classroom and those who also struggle working at their own pace. They believe the RHS’ IM recovery course benefits students because they may also seek help from a teacher everyday on a regular school schedule.

“With IM1 and IM2, it was the same concept of wanting to give students time to work on what they struggled with and given that time to do well,” Fletcher said.

Vaccaro typically places students working on the same chapter in pods around the room that they can help each other while on the same concept.

“It’s really just individualized on what their pace is a lot of kids just need time or their own pace,” Vaccaro said.

According to Fletcher the recovery course is the same curriculum as the regular IM classes, letting students who are repeating the course have a sense of familiarity with the class but giving more time to understand the material.

When Vaccaro and Fletcher originally came up with the idea to start a recovery class at RHS they decided on pretest to help students focus more on the parts of math they struggled.

“When students have to retake a class it’s kind of a deflating feeling that they have and typically I hear ‘I already know this’ our idea was that if a student could take a class in this format they would be able pretest in the chapters they were successful,” Vaccaro said. “That way they would have more time to work on the chapters where they were struggling, that was the concept behind it.”

Brooklyn Pontoni a current IM3 student enjoys the aspects of working on your own time which helped her learn the material in her IM2 recovery course at Independence.

“It’s a lot of work on your own, personally I like to work by myself and it did help me prepare for it.” Pontoni said.
Fletcher hopes the IM1 and IM2 recovery courses’ success at RHS may lead to the addition of an IM3 recovery course.