By KAREL HOLLOWAY / The Dallas Morning News
Monday, June 15, 2009
Amy Simpson is preparing to teach her first college class, but she'll be teaching it at North Garland High School.
Simpson will spend the summer wading through the requirements for a college composition course, matching them to the state curriculum for high school English. She'll pick materials and write lesson plans.
And when students complete the class, they'll have the chance to earn both high school and college credit for it.
The dual credit program is not new. But the classes are becoming more popular due to a change in state law requiring districts to offer students an opportunity to earn up to 12 hours of college credit in high school.
For decades, students have earned college credit by taking Advanced Placement classes, college level courses taught by specially trained district teachers. Students can take a test at the end of the course, and with a good grade, can earn college credit.
The new state requirement, along with the number of traditional AP courses, has left school districts such as Garland scrambling to meet the demand. They also must find enough money to pay for both programs.
In Garland, board members are planning a workshop this summer to discuss academic and financial considerations of both programs.
"I don't think they are competing programs," said Garland school board member Larry Glick. "They form part of the total college readiness program we are working on."
The district has spent years building its AP program. The end-of-course tests are administered nationally by the College Board, a nonprofit organization that oversees the program.
The number of Garland students taking AP tests increased 13 percent this year. But compared with last year, a smaller percentage of students earned a grade high enough to get college credit.
Meanwhile, the number of students taking dual credit classes is growing fast. About 770 students took the classes this school year, the second year for the fledgling program. Next year, 1,700 are signed up, said Linda Phemister, who oversees the Garland program.
But the biggest obstacle to expanding the dual credit program, officials say, is finding teachers with college-level teaching credentials. In general, teachers must have a master's degree in the subject they teach or have graduate hours in that field. Many have a master's degree, but not in their field.
Simpson has a master's in Christian education and is working on a doctorate in literary studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. In addition to dual credit, she also will be teaching the same AP classes in literature that she has taught for three years.
"I think that by offering both you hit a lot of different kinds of students," Simpson said.
Financially, dual credit is more expensive for districts. Richland and Eastfield community colleges, the two who partner with Garland, waive student tuition. But the district must pay for college textbooks.
With AP classes, students shoulder more of the financial burden. They must pay to take the tests – usually $54 with state and federal subsidies. But the total can pile up when students take multiple AP classes.
Academically speaking, research shows AP students do better in college than students who don't take advanced classes, but there is little recent research comparing AP courses with dual credit programs.
The most recent survey available, in 2001, examined college grade point averages of almost 25,000 Texas students. It found that AP students had slightly higher grade averages at the end of the first and fourth years of college.
For students, which program is best depends on their goals, said Cindy Castañeda, Garland school board member and executive dean of ethnic studies, social science and physical education at Richland College.
"I think parents need to have a good discussion with their student," she said.
James Goeman, a senior education specialist with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, works with the dual enrollment program. He said both programs can be a good fit.
"I don't think you can say that either one is clearly superior," he said. "Both are good for students; both of them are good for the state."
Comparing college credit programs
For years, high schools have offered Advanced Placement classes as a way for students to earn college credit. Districts are expanding their dual credit program in partnership with community colleges. Here are key points of each program:
Advanced Placement
•College-level classes offered in high schools, mostly to juniors and seniors.
•Often part of the honors program, students usually take pre-AP classes in earlier grades.
•AP is standardized nationally by the nonprofit College Board, which administers the end-of-course tests.
•Students scoring 3 or higher (on scale of 1 to 5) can typically receive college credit.
•May be best for students considering competitive out-of-state universities because they are based on a national standard.
Dual credit
•College-level classes offered by schools in partnership with local community colleges.
•Students must qualify for college admission and take a college placement test.
•Students who get a C or better automatically receive college and high school credit.
•Credits are accepted by all Texas public universities and may be accepted by other colleges.
•May be better for students planning to attend a Texas public university because of the guaranteed credit, and many Texas private colleges accept them as well.
Showing posts with label dual enrollment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dual enrollment. Show all posts
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Program to Deter High School Dropouts by Offering College Courses Is Approved
By KAREN W. ARENSON | NY Times
Published: October 24, 2007
Trying to improve New York’s high school graduation rates, state education officials are proposing to place 12,000 potential dropouts a year in college classes while they are still in high school. The plan, approved yesterday by the state’s Board of Regents, “would provide funding for students to take genuine college courses and receive credit for high school as well as for college,” said the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills.
“Instead of a four-plus-four plan — four years of high school and four years of college — students could actually complete high school and a bachelor’s degree in seven years,” the commissioner said. “And they would not be taking just random courses, but a set of courses accepted by higher education”
“Schools and colleges will be working together to pull youngsters who never would have had a chance, never would have considered a college career, to pull them into success,” he added.
A recent study of dual-enrollment programs in New York and Florida found that students in them were more likely to earn high school diplomas, to enroll in postsecondary education and to stay in college for more than one semester. The study, by researchers at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, also found that low-income students benefited more from such programs than other students did.
No legislation is required to put the program in place. But the department will include the proposal as part of a presentation to the governor’s budget division and legislators today, and ask for $100 million to pay for the program, which it hopes will enroll students in the fall of 2009. Department officials said yesterday that they had also begun to seek private financing and hoped to start the program even if they did not receive state money.
“It’s such a good model that we would figure out some way to make it work,” said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, senior deputy state education commissioner, one of the program’s architects.
Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick of Manhattan, chairwoman of the higher education committee, called the proposal "a great idea” when it was described to her.
“Especially with the expense of college being what it is, if you can get kids from disadvantaged families to complete college work in high school, they would be saving substantial dollars," she said, and added that the program might eliminate “one of the most serious barriers to kids completing college.”
Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, which has worked with the New York City Education Department to create and run an early-college high school where students complete two years of college by the time they graduate, and plans to open a second such school soon, called the Education Department plan “a noble idea,” but expressed concern about its execution.
“The idea would be to improve the quality of teaching and the treatment of students as adults,” he said. “This is easier said than done. You can’t do it in the environment of the traditional high school. You need entirely different faculty. If you’re going to enroll disadvantaged students who are underperforming, you need people who have a mission to turn this around.”
Typically, high-achieving students do college work while still in high school, through course work at nearby colleges or in advanced classes in their schools.
But in the nationwide quest to reduce high school dropout rates, using a similar strategy for lower-performing students has been drawing growing attention. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, has been a significant backer of high schools that also offer college work, including a growing number in New York City. Education officials pointed to several New York programs as models for their new proposal.
One model for the Regents’ proposal was the City University of New York’s “College Now,” which provided courses to more than 29,000 high school students last year. Nearly 300 city high schools participate.
Another model was the early college high schools, where students graduate from high school with a year or two of college credits, that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in recent years. Officials also pointed to programs for high school students offered by the State University of New York and some private colleges.
Joseph P. Frey, an associate education commissioner, said the department did not have a specific model in mind but hoped to attract many high schools and colleges into collaborations next year, when it solicits proposals.
“It is not clear that there is one best pathway,” he said. “We want a diversity of approaches here.”
“One of the critical intents is to get students excited about what they could do, and to get them to work at a highly competitive level,” Mr. Frey added. “That is something that would assist students to stay in school, and to not need remediation in college. And it will save money over the long term.”
Published: October 24, 2007
Trying to improve New York’s high school graduation rates, state education officials are proposing to place 12,000 potential dropouts a year in college classes while they are still in high school. The plan, approved yesterday by the state’s Board of Regents, “would provide funding for students to take genuine college courses and receive credit for high school as well as for college,” said the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills.
“Instead of a four-plus-four plan — four years of high school and four years of college — students could actually complete high school and a bachelor’s degree in seven years,” the commissioner said. “And they would not be taking just random courses, but a set of courses accepted by higher education”
“Schools and colleges will be working together to pull youngsters who never would have had a chance, never would have considered a college career, to pull them into success,” he added.
A recent study of dual-enrollment programs in New York and Florida found that students in them were more likely to earn high school diplomas, to enroll in postsecondary education and to stay in college for more than one semester. The study, by researchers at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, also found that low-income students benefited more from such programs than other students did.
No legislation is required to put the program in place. But the department will include the proposal as part of a presentation to the governor’s budget division and legislators today, and ask for $100 million to pay for the program, which it hopes will enroll students in the fall of 2009. Department officials said yesterday that they had also begun to seek private financing and hoped to start the program even if they did not receive state money.
“It’s such a good model that we would figure out some way to make it work,” said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, senior deputy state education commissioner, one of the program’s architects.
Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick of Manhattan, chairwoman of the higher education committee, called the proposal "a great idea” when it was described to her.
“Especially with the expense of college being what it is, if you can get kids from disadvantaged families to complete college work in high school, they would be saving substantial dollars," she said, and added that the program might eliminate “one of the most serious barriers to kids completing college.”
Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, which has worked with the New York City Education Department to create and run an early-college high school where students complete two years of college by the time they graduate, and plans to open a second such school soon, called the Education Department plan “a noble idea,” but expressed concern about its execution.
“The idea would be to improve the quality of teaching and the treatment of students as adults,” he said. “This is easier said than done. You can’t do it in the environment of the traditional high school. You need entirely different faculty. If you’re going to enroll disadvantaged students who are underperforming, you need people who have a mission to turn this around.”
Typically, high-achieving students do college work while still in high school, through course work at nearby colleges or in advanced classes in their schools.
But in the nationwide quest to reduce high school dropout rates, using a similar strategy for lower-performing students has been drawing growing attention. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, has been a significant backer of high schools that also offer college work, including a growing number in New York City. Education officials pointed to several New York programs as models for their new proposal.
One model for the Regents’ proposal was the City University of New York’s “College Now,” which provided courses to more than 29,000 high school students last year. Nearly 300 city high schools participate.
Another model was the early college high schools, where students graduate from high school with a year or two of college credits, that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in recent years. Officials also pointed to programs for high school students offered by the State University of New York and some private colleges.
Joseph P. Frey, an associate education commissioner, said the department did not have a specific model in mind but hoped to attract many high schools and colleges into collaborations next year, when it solicits proposals.
“It is not clear that there is one best pathway,” he said. “We want a diversity of approaches here.”
“One of the critical intents is to get students excited about what they could do, and to get them to work at a highly competitive level,” Mr. Frey added. “That is something that would assist students to stay in school, and to not need remediation in college. And it will save money over the long term.”
Monday, September 03, 2007
PSJA partners with STC on dual enrollment program
Ryan Holeywell / The Monitor
September 1, 2007
PHARR — Anthony Torres didn’t know where else to turn, so he started praying.
He was a senior at Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School, but he didn’t graduate because he failed the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and was short 2.5 credits to receive his diploma.
At the very moment he was thinking about his future, he got a call from a school district official asking if he would enroll in a new program that would let him complete his high school degree while starting college classes.
“I said, ‘Thank you, God.’” Torres recalled. “I ruined my chances, and God gave me another chance.”
Torres is one of more than 200 students expected to enroll in the partnership program between PSJA and South Texas College, called the College, Career & Technology Academy.
The program is geared toward students who narrowly missed graduating last year but want to get started with college.
STC President Shirley Reed said the school districts in McAllen, Hidalgo, La Joya and Mission have all expressed interest in similar programs, and Mercedes offered the program on a smaller scale this summer.
“We just think this is a marvelous way to transition (from) almost done with high school — get them through high school — and get them to begin college,” Reed said.
Those enrolled in the STC-PSJA program will be considered students of both institutions. The partnership helps students — who need a high school degree or equivalency to enroll in STC — while benefiting the school district, whose funding is tied to attendance and graduation rates.
“It’s very hard to get a lot of students back,” PSJA Superintendent Daniel King said of students who fall just a few credits short of graduating.
King expects 200 to 250 students to enroll in the program, which is set to launch this month. Students will likely take their classes at the Texas Workforce Solutions building on Business 83.
The partnership should be particularly helpful to students who failed to graduate due to TAKS scores and need more instruction before taking it again, King said. TAKS tests are scheduled to be given in October.
The program will initially focus on students who were seniors in 2007, but it could eventually expand to include students who were seniors two, three or even more years ago, King said. There will be no time limit for how long students can stay enrolled at the campus.
Those in the program would initially be part-time STC students taking about six hours of class in addition to their PSJA work.
Ramiro Benavidez, who attended PSJA High last year, said he didn’t graduate because he fell 10 points short on his TAKS math test. He said he wants to participate in the program so he can finish high school while starting his college-level study of criminal justice.
Pedro Ornelas, who also attended PSJA High last year, said he needs just two credits to graduate. He hopes to pursue a career in computer maintenance.
“It’ll help me go into college quicker,” he said of the new program.
September 1, 2007
PHARR — Anthony Torres didn’t know where else to turn, so he started praying.
He was a senior at Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School, but he didn’t graduate because he failed the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and was short 2.5 credits to receive his diploma.
At the very moment he was thinking about his future, he got a call from a school district official asking if he would enroll in a new program that would let him complete his high school degree while starting college classes.
“I said, ‘Thank you, God.’” Torres recalled. “I ruined my chances, and God gave me another chance.”
Torres is one of more than 200 students expected to enroll in the partnership program between PSJA and South Texas College, called the College, Career & Technology Academy.
The program is geared toward students who narrowly missed graduating last year but want to get started with college.
STC President Shirley Reed said the school districts in McAllen, Hidalgo, La Joya and Mission have all expressed interest in similar programs, and Mercedes offered the program on a smaller scale this summer.
“We just think this is a marvelous way to transition (from) almost done with high school — get them through high school — and get them to begin college,” Reed said.
Those enrolled in the STC-PSJA program will be considered students of both institutions. The partnership helps students — who need a high school degree or equivalency to enroll in STC — while benefiting the school district, whose funding is tied to attendance and graduation rates.
“It’s very hard to get a lot of students back,” PSJA Superintendent Daniel King said of students who fall just a few credits short of graduating.
King expects 200 to 250 students to enroll in the program, which is set to launch this month. Students will likely take their classes at the Texas Workforce Solutions building on Business 83.
The partnership should be particularly helpful to students who failed to graduate due to TAKS scores and need more instruction before taking it again, King said. TAKS tests are scheduled to be given in October.
The program will initially focus on students who were seniors in 2007, but it could eventually expand to include students who were seniors two, three or even more years ago, King said. There will be no time limit for how long students can stay enrolled at the campus.
Those in the program would initially be part-time STC students taking about six hours of class in addition to their PSJA work.
Ramiro Benavidez, who attended PSJA High last year, said he didn’t graduate because he fell 10 points short on his TAKS math test. He said he wants to participate in the program so he can finish high school while starting his college-level study of criminal justice.
Pedro Ornelas, who also attended PSJA High last year, said he needs just two credits to graduate. He hopes to pursue a career in computer maintenance.
“It’ll help me go into college quicker,” he said of the new program.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Questioning of Dual Enrollment Courses...
Published Online: July 31, 2007
Published in Print: August 1, 2007
Acceleration Under Review / Edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/01/44dualenrollment.h26.html?print=1
Dare Ford, a social studies teacher, supervises 9th graders at the Josephine Clements Dobbs Early College High School at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C. A handful of states, including N.C., are beginning to pay attention to the features associated with high-quality programs as they expand their dual-enrollment options.
—File photo by North Carolina Central University/AP
As more high school students enroll in programs that award college credit, policymakers are asking questions about quality.
By Alyson Klein
For years, only a handful of the highest achievers graduated from high school with college courses on their transcripts. But as states strive to blur the line between high school graduation requirements and college expectations, such dual-enrollment courses are quickly becoming part of a broader strategy to help more students become college-ready.
Over the past decade, much of the attention to dual enrollment has focused on expansion and funding. Some individual programs—and increasingly, states—are working, however, to ensure that quality goes along with the proliferation. They want courses that are challenging enough to warrant college credit and that can effectively prepare students for higher education.
“It’s a real struggle. How do you expand access without diluting quality?” said Melinda Mechur Karp, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, based at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. “There’s some growing pains as [dual-enrollment options] go from small-scale to much more prominent and enthusiastically embraced programs.”
To help guide states’ efforts, policy experts have identified promising practices, beginning with an intensive and sustained collaboration between high schools and colleges on course content, standards, and pedagogy.
Such cooperation is at the heart of a set of accreditation standards for “concurrent enrollment” programs, or college courses delivered on high school campuses by high school teachers. The standards, which have recently been adopted by several states, were developed by the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, based in Syracuse, N.Y.
Courses that allow high school students to receive both high school and college credit simultaneously fall under the broad definition of dual enrollment. A number of different models fit the bill. In addition to concurrent enrollment, examples include tech-prep, which generally serves students in career and technical education, and early-college high schools, usually located on college campuses, which allow students to work toward an associate’s degree, or two years of college credit.
Dual-enrollment classes can be offered at colleges, taught by professors and attended by a mix of high school and college students. And many experts consider Advanced Placement courses a dual-enrollment option, since students who receive qualifying scores on the AP exams have the opportunity to earn college credit for courses taken in high school.
All these models have exploded in popularity in recent years, as policymakers and educators try to address worries about a lack of rigor and innovation at many high schools.
Support for Students
Colleges with dual-enrollment programs for at-risk high school students reported offering these types of extra help.
SOURCE: “Dual Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03,” National Center for Education Statistics
But concurrent-enrollment programs have proliferated the fastest. During the 2002-03 school year, there were approximately 1.2 million “enrollments” in dual-credit courses nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Of those, 74 percent were courses taught on a high school campus, according to the report, which contains the most recent data available on the topic.
Concurrent-enrollment programs are probably the most popular because they’re the cheapest and easiest to implement, policy experts say. But they’re also the programs that tend to prompt the most skepticism from policymakers and from colleges accepting credits.
“There’s very little accountability for these kinds of classes,” said Betsy Brand, the director of the American Youth Policy Forum, a research organization based in Washington that last year released an extensive study of accelerated-learning programs. “Nobody really knows what happens in them.”
That’s partly because most programs aren’t collecting much information on student outcomes, she said. An examination of accelerated-learning options, including concurrent enrollment, published in May 2006 by the Boulder, Colo.-based Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education reported that no data set provides state-by-state information about programs in a form that’s easy to analyze for trends, strengths, and weaknesses.
That lack of data is troubling to some higher education officials, who must decide whether to accept students’ credits, and to state lawmakers, who often control the purse strings for such programs. Some policy officials prefer Advanced Placement to other types of dual-enrollment options, since they believe its exams offer a built-in quality control. The New York City-based College Board, which sponsors the program, this year began to “audit” AP courses to make sure they meet rigorous standards.
Science teacher Melissa McIntire, left, helps Shayla Cooper, a first-year student at the Dayton (Ohio) Early College Academy, with a genetics problem. Seven of the 32 students who graduated from the school in May earned enough credit to receive associate’s degrees.
—File photo by Chris Stewart/Dayton Daily News
“AP has a history. AP has a curriculum that’s well defined. AP has an assessment tool,” said Robert T. Tad Perry, the executive director of the South Dakota board of regents. “There’s no common standards for [concurrent]-enrollment courses. And there’s no common definition of what constitutes a college course.”
Last year, Mr. Perry audited his state’s concurrent-enrollment courses. Some classes had college-level expectations, he said, but other practices disturbed him. For instance, students taking concurrent-enrollment classes were mixed into classrooms with those taking the high school version of the course. And, he said, some of the supposed college-level courses used high school textbooks, materials, and assessments.
To address such criticisms, the National Association of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, known as NACEP, devised a set of accreditation standards for concurrent- enrollment programs.
Over the past year, at least four states—Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, and Minnesota—have called for their programs to adopt those standards. Washington state has based its own guidelines on NACEP’s.
Varied Purposes
A nationally representative survey of colleges that offered dual-enrollment programs for at-risk high school students in the 2002-03 school year described them as having these primary missions.
SOURCE: “Dual Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03,” National Center for Education Statistics
Other states have policies in place aimed at making sure colleges carefully monitor any of their courses that are offered on high school campuses.
For instance, Florida, which operates a number of dual-enrollment programs primarily aimed at high and middle achievers, has regulations calling for colleges to treat concurrent-enrollment courses—and the high school educators who lead them—the same way they would any other course taught by an adjunct faculty member. Like Washington state, Florida relies on its regional accrediting agency to ensure that the high-school-based courses pass muster. NACEP’s standards aren’t necessarily geared to improving access for low-income students, which states are increasingly seeing as a potential mission for dual enrollment. But they do provide a blueprint to help high schools and colleges work closely on course content, assessments, and teaching methods.
Such give and take is critical to developing concurrent-enrollment and other dual-enrollment polices that can effectively use college-level work as “an apprenticeship of sorts” to help bridge the gap between high school and postsecondary education for all students, said Nancy Hoffman, a vice president at Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based research and advocacy organization.
Part of that process may involve professional development for high school teachers, to help them shift their instructional methods to more closely mirror college teaching.
“Norms are just as important as content,” said Ms. Mechur Karp of the Community College Research Center. For example, some college classes tend to involve fewer small-scale assignments and more independent learning than high school courses in the same subject. If possible, Ms. Mechur Karp said, high school teachers should be given time to observe instruction on the crediting college’s campus.
A Sample of Partnerships
A 2006 report by the American Youth Policy Forum on accelerated-learning opportunities highlighted a variety of programs, including:
Program Washington State Running Start Olive-Harvey Middle College High School
Students Served
High, middle,
low achievers;
first-generation
college; at-risk,
and others. High achievers For low achievers who have officially withdrawn or been expelled from Chicago public high schools
Funding
Cost to students None for up to 18 credit hours per semester, but pay books, transportation costs No cost to students
Location
College campus, high school classroom,
or both
College classrooms and online courses All classes on the community college’s campus
Prerequisites for Participation
Tests or grades,
recommedations,
or interviews Admissions requirement set by postsecondary institution Must score at 8th grade levels in reading and math on admissions test; interview required
Program Length
From one semester
to up to
five years Open to high school juniors and seniors Two to three years; students can enter in grades 10-12
Faculty
High school, college, or both Faculty members at the college Both high school and community college faculty members.
Many classes are co-taught.
Extra Supports
Designed to help
students navigate
the more-difficult
coursework None Caring adults, academic assistance, safe environment, and peer network.
Regulatory Framework
Promoted by state;
funding sources Dual-enrollment mandated by state’s Learning by Choice law. Colleges bill districts, which can keep 7 percent for administrative costs. Has charter school status and funding; receives additional money from state Department of Children and Family Services and Illinois Board of Education.
SOURCE: "The College Ladder, Linking Secondary and Postsecondary Education for All Students," American Youth Policy Forum
To help students tackle these new expectations, experts also stress that all types of dual-enrollment programs—and particularly those aimed at students who might not consider themselves college material— should incorporate extra supports, such as counseling, tutoring, and help with study skills.
“There are certain things a program should offer,” Ms. Brand said. “If it’s just an education class without any other supports, then students probably aren’t going to be as successful.”
If possible, the programs should expose students to college life through campus visits and opportunities to use campus facilities, such as libraries and labs.
Not all students who can benefit from college courses are prepared to handle them, at least initially. Policy experts recommend that programs carefully sequence coursework so that students aren’t simply thrown into a college course without the proper preparation or context.
College Now, a City University of New York-operated program offered on both high school and college campuses, serving students at nearly every high school in the 1.1 million-student New York City system, requires that students receive certain scores on state mathematics and language arts tests before they’re allowed to take college-credit courses.
Students who aren’t ready for those classes have access to noncredit “foundation courses,” usually offered on college campuses, that are intended to help prepare them for college-level coursework in an area of interest.
“We work very closely with college faculty on what they think students should come in knowing,” said Eric Hofmann, the associate director of College Now. “It’s not about the content they have to cover, since it’s not for college credit. What we want them to do is slow down and get deeper into discipline-based skills.”
For instance, he said, a foundation course in history could show students how to analyze primary-source documents in an historical context.
A handful of states are beginning to pay attention to the features associated with high-quality programs as they expand their dual-enrollment options. At least nine states—Florida, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia—have or are contemplating policies to make “the attainment of college credit in high school an opportunity, or even a requirement, for all students,” according to an article by Ms. Hoffman set to appear in Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School With College Makes Sense and How to Do It, to be published this fall by Harvard Education Publishing Group.
Rhode Island is working with Jobs for the Future on a proposal to expand high-quality dual-credit options, with the goal of giving every student the opportunity to receive substantial college credit before graduating from high school.
In a draft report released last year, the organization urged Rhode Island to establish a data system to carefully track student characteristics and program outcomes, such as whether students who took dual-credit courses are more likely to enroll in college than similar students who did not.
Colleges should review portfolios of student work to make sure grading and expectations are comparable, Jobs for the Future suggested. The state should also periodically audit student work for courses taught on high school campuses, the organization’s draft report recommended.
“Course titles can create false promises,” said Todd D. Flaherty, a deputy state commissioner of education in Rhode Island. “We want to get kids into college-prep courses that are indeed college-prep.”
Coverage of new schooling arrangements and classroom improvement efforts is supported by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.
Vol. 26, Issue 44, Pages 22-24
Published in Print: August 1, 2007
Acceleration Under Review / Edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/01/44dualenrollment.h26.html?print=1
Dare Ford, a social studies teacher, supervises 9th graders at the Josephine Clements Dobbs Early College High School at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C. A handful of states, including N.C., are beginning to pay attention to the features associated with high-quality programs as they expand their dual-enrollment options.
—File photo by North Carolina Central University/AP
As more high school students enroll in programs that award college credit, policymakers are asking questions about quality.
By Alyson Klein
For years, only a handful of the highest achievers graduated from high school with college courses on their transcripts. But as states strive to blur the line between high school graduation requirements and college expectations, such dual-enrollment courses are quickly becoming part of a broader strategy to help more students become college-ready.
Over the past decade, much of the attention to dual enrollment has focused on expansion and funding. Some individual programs—and increasingly, states—are working, however, to ensure that quality goes along with the proliferation. They want courses that are challenging enough to warrant college credit and that can effectively prepare students for higher education.
“It’s a real struggle. How do you expand access without diluting quality?” said Melinda Mechur Karp, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, based at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. “There’s some growing pains as [dual-enrollment options] go from small-scale to much more prominent and enthusiastically embraced programs.”
To help guide states’ efforts, policy experts have identified promising practices, beginning with an intensive and sustained collaboration between high schools and colleges on course content, standards, and pedagogy.
Such cooperation is at the heart of a set of accreditation standards for “concurrent enrollment” programs, or college courses delivered on high school campuses by high school teachers. The standards, which have recently been adopted by several states, were developed by the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, based in Syracuse, N.Y.
Courses that allow high school students to receive both high school and college credit simultaneously fall under the broad definition of dual enrollment. A number of different models fit the bill. In addition to concurrent enrollment, examples include tech-prep, which generally serves students in career and technical education, and early-college high schools, usually located on college campuses, which allow students to work toward an associate’s degree, or two years of college credit.
Dual-enrollment classes can be offered at colleges, taught by professors and attended by a mix of high school and college students. And many experts consider Advanced Placement courses a dual-enrollment option, since students who receive qualifying scores on the AP exams have the opportunity to earn college credit for courses taken in high school.
All these models have exploded in popularity in recent years, as policymakers and educators try to address worries about a lack of rigor and innovation at many high schools.
Support for Students
Colleges with dual-enrollment programs for at-risk high school students reported offering these types of extra help.
SOURCE: “Dual Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03,” National Center for Education Statistics
But concurrent-enrollment programs have proliferated the fastest. During the 2002-03 school year, there were approximately 1.2 million “enrollments” in dual-credit courses nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Of those, 74 percent were courses taught on a high school campus, according to the report, which contains the most recent data available on the topic.
Concurrent-enrollment programs are probably the most popular because they’re the cheapest and easiest to implement, policy experts say. But they’re also the programs that tend to prompt the most skepticism from policymakers and from colleges accepting credits.
“There’s very little accountability for these kinds of classes,” said Betsy Brand, the director of the American Youth Policy Forum, a research organization based in Washington that last year released an extensive study of accelerated-learning programs. “Nobody really knows what happens in them.”
That’s partly because most programs aren’t collecting much information on student outcomes, she said. An examination of accelerated-learning options, including concurrent enrollment, published in May 2006 by the Boulder, Colo.-based Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education reported that no data set provides state-by-state information about programs in a form that’s easy to analyze for trends, strengths, and weaknesses.
That lack of data is troubling to some higher education officials, who must decide whether to accept students’ credits, and to state lawmakers, who often control the purse strings for such programs. Some policy officials prefer Advanced Placement to other types of dual-enrollment options, since they believe its exams offer a built-in quality control. The New York City-based College Board, which sponsors the program, this year began to “audit” AP courses to make sure they meet rigorous standards.
Science teacher Melissa McIntire, left, helps Shayla Cooper, a first-year student at the Dayton (Ohio) Early College Academy, with a genetics problem. Seven of the 32 students who graduated from the school in May earned enough credit to receive associate’s degrees.
—File photo by Chris Stewart/Dayton Daily News
“AP has a history. AP has a curriculum that’s well defined. AP has an assessment tool,” said Robert T. Tad Perry, the executive director of the South Dakota board of regents. “There’s no common standards for [concurrent]-enrollment courses. And there’s no common definition of what constitutes a college course.”
Last year, Mr. Perry audited his state’s concurrent-enrollment courses. Some classes had college-level expectations, he said, but other practices disturbed him. For instance, students taking concurrent-enrollment classes were mixed into classrooms with those taking the high school version of the course. And, he said, some of the supposed college-level courses used high school textbooks, materials, and assessments.
To address such criticisms, the National Association of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, known as NACEP, devised a set of accreditation standards for concurrent- enrollment programs.
Over the past year, at least four states—Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, and Minnesota—have called for their programs to adopt those standards. Washington state has based its own guidelines on NACEP’s.
Varied Purposes
A nationally representative survey of colleges that offered dual-enrollment programs for at-risk high school students in the 2002-03 school year described them as having these primary missions.
SOURCE: “Dual Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03,” National Center for Education Statistics
Other states have policies in place aimed at making sure colleges carefully monitor any of their courses that are offered on high school campuses.
For instance, Florida, which operates a number of dual-enrollment programs primarily aimed at high and middle achievers, has regulations calling for colleges to treat concurrent-enrollment courses—and the high school educators who lead them—the same way they would any other course taught by an adjunct faculty member. Like Washington state, Florida relies on its regional accrediting agency to ensure that the high-school-based courses pass muster. NACEP’s standards aren’t necessarily geared to improving access for low-income students, which states are increasingly seeing as a potential mission for dual enrollment. But they do provide a blueprint to help high schools and colleges work closely on course content, assessments, and teaching methods.
Such give and take is critical to developing concurrent-enrollment and other dual-enrollment polices that can effectively use college-level work as “an apprenticeship of sorts” to help bridge the gap between high school and postsecondary education for all students, said Nancy Hoffman, a vice president at Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based research and advocacy organization.
Part of that process may involve professional development for high school teachers, to help them shift their instructional methods to more closely mirror college teaching.
“Norms are just as important as content,” said Ms. Mechur Karp of the Community College Research Center. For example, some college classes tend to involve fewer small-scale assignments and more independent learning than high school courses in the same subject. If possible, Ms. Mechur Karp said, high school teachers should be given time to observe instruction on the crediting college’s campus.
A Sample of Partnerships
A 2006 report by the American Youth Policy Forum on accelerated-learning opportunities highlighted a variety of programs, including:
Program Washington State Running Start Olive-Harvey Middle College High School
Students Served
High, middle,
low achievers;
first-generation
college; at-risk,
and others. High achievers For low achievers who have officially withdrawn or been expelled from Chicago public high schools
Funding
Cost to students None for up to 18 credit hours per semester, but pay books, transportation costs No cost to students
Location
College campus, high school classroom,
or both
College classrooms and online courses All classes on the community college’s campus
Prerequisites for Participation
Tests or grades,
recommedations,
or interviews Admissions requirement set by postsecondary institution Must score at 8th grade levels in reading and math on admissions test; interview required
Program Length
From one semester
to up to
five years Open to high school juniors and seniors Two to three years; students can enter in grades 10-12
Faculty
High school, college, or both Faculty members at the college Both high school and community college faculty members.
Many classes are co-taught.
Extra Supports
Designed to help
students navigate
the more-difficult
coursework None Caring adults, academic assistance, safe environment, and peer network.
Regulatory Framework
Promoted by state;
funding sources Dual-enrollment mandated by state’s Learning by Choice law. Colleges bill districts, which can keep 7 percent for administrative costs. Has charter school status and funding; receives additional money from state Department of Children and Family Services and Illinois Board of Education.
SOURCE: "The College Ladder, Linking Secondary and Postsecondary Education for All Students," American Youth Policy Forum
To help students tackle these new expectations, experts also stress that all types of dual-enrollment programs—and particularly those aimed at students who might not consider themselves college material— should incorporate extra supports, such as counseling, tutoring, and help with study skills.
“There are certain things a program should offer,” Ms. Brand said. “If it’s just an education class without any other supports, then students probably aren’t going to be as successful.”
If possible, the programs should expose students to college life through campus visits and opportunities to use campus facilities, such as libraries and labs.
Not all students who can benefit from college courses are prepared to handle them, at least initially. Policy experts recommend that programs carefully sequence coursework so that students aren’t simply thrown into a college course without the proper preparation or context.
College Now, a City University of New York-operated program offered on both high school and college campuses, serving students at nearly every high school in the 1.1 million-student New York City system, requires that students receive certain scores on state mathematics and language arts tests before they’re allowed to take college-credit courses.
Students who aren’t ready for those classes have access to noncredit “foundation courses,” usually offered on college campuses, that are intended to help prepare them for college-level coursework in an area of interest.
“We work very closely with college faculty on what they think students should come in knowing,” said Eric Hofmann, the associate director of College Now. “It’s not about the content they have to cover, since it’s not for college credit. What we want them to do is slow down and get deeper into discipline-based skills.”
For instance, he said, a foundation course in history could show students how to analyze primary-source documents in an historical context.
A handful of states are beginning to pay attention to the features associated with high-quality programs as they expand their dual-enrollment options. At least nine states—Florida, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia—have or are contemplating policies to make “the attainment of college credit in high school an opportunity, or even a requirement, for all students,” according to an article by Ms. Hoffman set to appear in Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School With College Makes Sense and How to Do It, to be published this fall by Harvard Education Publishing Group.
Rhode Island is working with Jobs for the Future on a proposal to expand high-quality dual-credit options, with the goal of giving every student the opportunity to receive substantial college credit before graduating from high school.
In a draft report released last year, the organization urged Rhode Island to establish a data system to carefully track student characteristics and program outcomes, such as whether students who took dual-credit courses are more likely to enroll in college than similar students who did not.
Colleges should review portfolios of student work to make sure grading and expectations are comparable, Jobs for the Future suggested. The state should also periodically audit student work for courses taught on high school campuses, the organization’s draft report recommended.
“Course titles can create false promises,” said Todd D. Flaherty, a deputy state commissioner of education in Rhode Island. “We want to get kids into college-prep courses that are indeed college-prep.”
Coverage of new schooling arrangements and classroom improvement efforts is supported by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.
Vol. 26, Issue 44, Pages 22-24
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