Houston ISD’s Graduation Lab Initiative was designed to meet the needs of overage and/or under-credited students as they strive to complete their high school education.  The purpose of the initiative is to create campus-based computer labs and programs for high school students that operate with flexible hours to provide access to online courses and tutorials for state and national achievement tests.

At Chavez our online course offering includes a wide variety of credit recovery and original credit options.  The term “credit recovery” refers to passage and receipt of credit for a course that was attempted unsuccessfully at a previous time.  An online credit recovery student has already accrued sufficient “seat-time” for a course failed in a teacher’s classroom, and will recover credit for the failure by demonstrating mastery of the course’s TEKS objectives through online assessment and traditional, proctored testing.  “Original credit” refers to “first-time” credit, in which a student receives complete instruction that is not limited to the demonstration of competency, as in credit recovery.

Apex Learning’s digital curriculum is utilized as the foundation of the online credit recovery and original credit programs at Chavez, through self-paced instruction and assessment directly aligned with state standards.  The offering includes “Prescriptive Semester” courses, in which pre-assessments identify individual student needs in the demonstration of competency, as well as “Literacy Advantage” courses that provide additional language support and vocabulary strategies to assist struggling readers, English language learners (ELL), and others in need of additional support.  Chavez’s Grad Lab Teachers of record are available for face to face tutorial sessions to support students as they learn.  All students are actively monitored by Grad Lab staff to ensure timely completion of course requirements, and a quiet, open, and resource-laden learning environment is maintained in the Lab itself at all times.

Under HISD’s PowerUp initiative, all Chavez students are offered the opportunity to use a state-of-the-art laptop computer to support their learning.  This has allowed the Grad Lab initiative to benefit students more efficiently with greater access to online curricula and assessment.

For more information on how Chavez’s Grad Lab can help your student achieve his or her education goals, please contact the campus’ Graduation Coach, Mr. Jay Alvarez at Jay.Alvarez@houstonisd.org or 713-495-6950.