Summer school for credit recovery

Another education-based blog. I just finished teaching two weeks of Summer school for credit recovery. For those not in education, this form of Summer school allows the student who failed a class within a certain margin (10 points below the lowest passing grade) to get a passing grade for the class, thus avoiding having to take it again. The rules are that the student must only miss one day, no more, and that they must do whatever they are asked to do. Assuming they follow those rules and do not get kicked out for behavior issues, they end up with a pass in the class.

As the science teacher for Summer school, I had three classes to teach at once; Earth Science, Physical Science, and Biology. With the help of my loving wife, I discovered a way to teach three classes at once. Each student had to do a project based on their class' content. The exact content of the project is not relevant to this post, but rest assured I had those children earn their passing grade by making them think about each objective for the subject for which they were recovering credit.

Here is my reason for posting. As far as I could tell from conversations with those in charge of the Summer school, as long as the children showed up (attendance) and did not act up (behavior) they would get their credit. I was under the impression that the children had to finish whatever we assigned them, but apparently I was mistaken. I do not think that is appropriate. I do not know what the other teachers were doing in their classrooms, but my goal was to get the students to learn the material they had flaked on before, to show that they can master the material they were required to master in order to pass the class. If they are not required to actually finish their assigned tasks, just to be working on it until time is up, are we justified in changing their score to a passing grade for that subject? What are we actually teaching them here about life and the real world outside of high school? Most of the students did as I asked and were finished with their projects before the end of the last day. BUT, there were about three who I was constantly having to wake up. One of them managed to finish his project somehow, but the other two were incomplete. Were it up to me, they would not have received credit. Apparently, it was not up to me.

What do you think of this? Should the students be held accountable for finishing a credit-recovery project properly, or is it enough for them to follow the rules for a couple of weeks and get the credit?