High school college credit program gets a makeover

Published: Friday, January 6, 2012 at 9:55 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, January 6, 2012 at 9:55 a.m.

High school students in the Cape Fear region who want to get college credit will navigate a new program this spring.

Career and College Promise, the new college transfer program for North Carolina high schoolers, carves out three tracks that eligible students can enroll in. They can earn up to 44 credits from a community college that will transfer to any participating university or a certificate in technical community college programs. Career and College Promise consolidates all other dual enrollment programs, which included Huskins, concurrent enrollment and Learn and Earn Online.

Students can start taking classes through the program as soon as the spring semester starts. For most area high schools, that'll come at the end of January after exams.

High schoolers already in former dual enrollment programs in New Hanover County will be grandfathered in to the new program for the spring semester, said LaVerne Pickett, career technical education facilitator for the schools. After that, students will have to meet the new program's stricter requirements to participate.

Those new requirements open the program to only juniors and seniors. Students must enter the program with a 3.0 high school GPA and maintain a 2.0 GPA in college classes. Students also must earn a certain score on a diagnostic assessment test other than the SAT or ACT.

To take a class at Cape Fear Community College under old dual enrollment programs, students had to be 16 years old, earn a certain SAT score and be preapproved by their high school principal, said David Hardin, CFCC's spokesman.

Pickett said she felt the point of the new requirements was to make sure students could handle college-level coursework.

"Students accessing these courses are supposed to be college ready," she said. "This is just to ensure that students have those foundational skills they need."

But Brian Weeks, college liaison at CFCC, said the more stringent requirements could mean fewer students would sign up for the program initially.

"Eventually, with that bar set, more students are going to take the college classes seriously," he said. "We're going to see a little bit of enrollment decrease just because it is stricter."

The three specific pathways also limit the variety of classes students can take, Hardin said. But students can earn more credits in each of the pathways under the new program.

Those pathways also make the new consolidated program stronger than any of the old individual tracks, said Rob Hines, director of local education agency projects for the state Department of Public Instruction.

"Prior programs didn't necessarily specify requirements that ensured that the investment made in both time and funding led to a specific outcome such as transfer credit," he said.

Students in private and charter schools and home-schooled students are also eligible to apply for the program, Hines said. They have to meet all the requirements laid out for traditional high school students.

Apart from the requirement changes, Pickett said the new program is simply a restructuring.

"This has just renamed our program," she said. "Students will still have the same kind of access they've always had."

Pressley Baird: 343-2328

On Twitter: @PressleyBaird

Source: http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20120106/articles/120109817

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