Case Study: Academy Online High School achieves a 36% reduction in student failure rate with D2L Brightspace

An online high school uses data to help visualize each student’s journey

Academy Online High School (AOHS) is a Colorado-based online high school launched in 2009 to serve traveling military families and other students needing flexible schedules. Tasked with meeting state and national standards while supporting diverse learners, enabling credit recovery, and improving communication, AOHS needed a way to visualize individual progress and identify at-risk students early so teachers could provide timely, personalized support.

AOHS implemented D2L’s Brightspace platform—including the Curriculum Library and Brightspace Insights Student Success System—to deliver customized courses, predictive analytics, and prescriptive feedback that let teachers intervene before issues escalate. The initiative reduced the student failure rate by 36% over five years, grew enrollment from 100 to 400 students, and produced about a 10.1% higher average on state-mandated ninth- and tenth-grade math compared with the district-wide high school average.

Academy Online High School

Rick Tanski

Principal