Success Stories > Willcox, AZ

Versatile Novel prevents “domino effect”
at southern Arizona school

WILLCOX, Ariz. – Versatility wasn’t on the minds of Willcox High School administrators when they decided to look for Web-based courses to help one specific group of area students.

But that’s exactly what they got after partnering with EdOptions™— along with a string of successes.

Administrators were looking to offer another path for alternative education students in danger of dropping out. They identified EdOptions’ Novel™— a library of more than 39 Web-based core and elective courses available anytime, anywhere with an Internet connection— as the perfect solution.

Soon after acquiring Novel, however, administrators recognized its potential to help all students.

“We were surprised at how much we could use it,” said Joel Todd, principal of Willcox High.

Failing a course at Willcox High used to have a domino effect on a student’s academic progress. If a student failed freshman English, they’d have to retake it as a sophomore, pushing sophomore English back a year.

Now administrators at the school offer Novel’s Web-based courses to students so they can retake a failed course immediately, rather than sitting through the same class for an entire semester.

“If we hadn’t had that option available, we really would have been in a bind,” Todd said.

The principal said the option helped dozens of students at his 450-student high school last year alone, with students being able to progress rather than getting stalled in a particular subject area.

Novel’s Web-based courses even unexpectedly solved a challenge that teachers and administrators had been struggling with for years: what to do with students when there was a personality conflict.

Willcox High School
Willcox, Arizona
450 students

For more info contact:

Joel Todd
Principal of Willcox High School
(520) 384-4214

EdOptions
1-866-243-7460

Each course at the rural high school has only one teacher available to teach it, so if personality conflicts arose between teacher and student, few options existed to remedy them. Now, administrators can transfer a student into the Web-based course.

“It gives the student the opportunity to start over” he said.

Todd said he’s extremely grateful to have the Web-based courses and in the future, hopes to expand the school’s use of Novel even further.

“Novel gives us so many options,” he said. “It gives students the opportunity to recover credit, be on track for graduation, and most importantly, a feeling of success.”