College Credit
Now Open For Ordinary Students
By Daniel Muniz

In the past, the only students who were able to gain credit for taking college level classes in high school were the best and brightest kids. It was totally irrelevant that so many “average” and “below average” students were still going to college. However, there is a new trend that offers ordinary kids the same opportunity.

One huge but very valid complaint that many parents have of our public school system is that it was purposely designed to accommodate the lowest common denominator. Such a goal may satisfy the aspirations of bureaucrats and politicians because they want to graduate as many kids as possible, but that objective is just so reprehensible for people who want their children to have the best education possible. Completing the bare minimum is simply not enough especially for the college bound students who are not in any gifted and talented programs.

So what can the educational leadership do to placate the parents who want more than just the basics?

Schools accommodated this desire by offering higher levels of subjects in high school such as algebra II, pre-calculus, and calculus instead of math for boneheads and chemistry I and II, and physics instead of science for boneheads. They also expanded the curriculums in other areas as well.

But the big prize of college credit was always off limits except to the gifted and talented.

That incensed a lot of parents because such programs were miniscule in size which meant that a huge number of college bound students were ineligible to participate. Regrettably, education bureaucrats could wash their hands from this argument by claiming that the average and below average kids weren’t bright enough to be involved in any of these programs even though they were still planning to go to college.

One consolation was the emergence of AP (Advanced Placement) classes in which students can take a national exam at the end of the course. However, many critics felt that an AP class is a roll of the dice because everything is contingent on just one test. And afterwards, there is absolutely no guarantee of college credit because it entirely depends on what score certain universities will accept as passing.

The advantage of taking a real college class in high school is that once the course is completed and passed, then the student earns the credit for it. And that is the obvious benefit that so many parents have been clamoring for.

Yes, their kids are not the cream of the crop but that is totally irrelevant because they will eventually be taking the same classes in college so why not take them right now while they are still in high school?

Fortunately, some states are finally experimenting with this approach.

For decades, many school districts ran a separate college prep school but that could only house a miniscule number of the college bound. A magnet school inside an existing campus slowly became a better alternative because a new school doesn’t have to be built although it still catered to the “gifted and talented.”

Instead, the approach that more school districts are using is a dual credit program in which a student either goes to a local community college for the class or the district can have the professors come to the high school to teach it. And in other districts, some of these classes are taught in-house by the school’s own teachers since they are also qualified to teach on the college level. Either way, more ordinary kids can take these classes.

However, the best outcome is the school districts that offer programs of up to 60 hours of credit. As a result, a student can complete nearly two years worth of college credit while simultaneously earning a high school diploma. And the best thing about it is that participation doesn’t have to be for the full program so below-average students can take the right number of hours that they feel comfortable with while still gaining college credit.

Of course such curriculums will be far more rigorous and definitely more demanding than typical high school classes but that is fine. One big complaint that universities have is that too many of their freshman are grossly ill prepared to handle college level work which means that a lot of them have to take remedial classes or end up taking five or six years to graduate.

It’s not the kid’s fault if his or her high school watered down its curriculum which is why so many parents want these alternatives available to their children. In fact, it is fairly common for students to claim that they learned more in one semester at college than two years of the same subject in high school.

Overall, it is a great improvement for our education system to move in this direction.

For far too long, college credit in high school belonged only to the top achievers. It is time for that monopoly to come to an abrupt end and open up these opportunities for everyone. After all, it is not unheard of for the brightest kids in high school who should have breezed through higher education to not even be able to earn a college degree while below average kids end up with a master’s degree or higher. It happens all the time.

But more importantly, average and below average kids who are college bound need to have these opportunities available to them. And if millions of high school students can gain 30 or 60 hours of college credit, then our public school system can be truly revolutionized.

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