Edgenuity has always said its courses are meant to be used under a qualified teacher, "not as a substitute for a teacher." In practice, schools short on staff keep doing exactly that: putting students in front of Edgenuity for a whole subject, with an adult in the room who may not know the material. Students in those classes are blunt about the result.

Disclosure: EdgyPro makes software for students who use Edgenuity. Facts and quotes come from the reporting listed under Sources.

A Spanish Class With No Spanish Teacher

In April 2024, Richmond Confidential, a news site run by UC Berkeley's journalism school, reported that Kennedy High had turned to Edgenuity to cover a vacant Spanish position. The district called it a stop-gap and described the course as "engaging and interactive." The people in the room disagreed.

"It's terrible. It's a joke. And I just sit there because I'm not credentialed to teach Spanish, but legally they needed someone to be there."

Noah Mogey, English teacher supervising the class (Richmond Confidential)

Ninth grader Janna Nievarez said the homework felt "pointless": "It's just not a way that I learn properly, and so I haven't really learned much in that class." Tenth grader Laura Leon Hernandez, who signed up hoping to reconnect with her family's language, described classmates who "coast" through:

"It's easy to cheat, so a lot of students just use Google Translate on all their assignments. We're not learning anything."

Laura Leon Hernandez, 10th grade (Richmond Confidential)

Credit Recovery: Cheaper Than a Teacher

For years, Edgenuity's bread and butter was online credit recovery: letting students who failed a class make it up on a computer. As BuzzFeed News reported, Vanderbilt professor Carolyn Heinrich found that online credit recovery saves districts about half of what a real teacher would cost, and her study of Wisconsin students using Edgenuity found an association between more time in online credit recovery and lower math and reading test scores. Edgenuity disputed the research, pointing to an American Institutes for Research study that found outcomes comparable to teacher-directed classes in Los Angeles, depending on how the software was used.

Heinrich's view of the trade-off was direct: a program that lets a district put "twice as many kids in a classroom where the instruction is driven by an online system, that's replacing the teacher." And the students most likely to end up there, she said, are those who've "been historically underserved."

Teachers Say the Same Thing

In Charleston, South Carolina, the head of the local teachers' alliance put it plainly to BuzzFeed: "If you can afford to have a teacher in a classroom with students, you wouldn't pay for Edgenuity. You wouldn't need Edgenuity." Even Lisa Graham Keegan, an early consultant to the company's predecessor, told the outlet: "It cannot take the place of great teachers. It's not magic."

If You're the Student in That Room

You can't hire your school a teacher. You can stop wasting hours on the parts that don't teach you anything. EdgyPro runs on top of Edgenuity and:

• Moves through videos and instruction with Auto Advance.
• Answers quizzes and tests with Auto Answers, at a Grade Range you choose.
• Handles language-class activities on Classic with the Language Activity Skipper.
• Explains any question with the Ask AI button, so you can actually learn the part that matters.

Then spend the time you get back on Khan Academy, Duolingo, or a real tutor. Start with our Edgenuity tips or get a key.

Sources

• Panashe Matemba-Mutasa, "'We're not learning anything': Kennedy High students frustrated with software that subs for a Spanish teacher," Richmond Confidential, April 26, 2024, richmondconfidential.org.
• Caroline O'Donovan, "This Virtual Classroom Company Made Millions During The Pandemic While Students Languished," BuzzFeed News, October 11, 2021, buzzfeednews.com.