Dual Enrollment

**amykhar** · #1 08-19-2008, 11:36 AM

Pennsylvania in the past couple of years has been giving grants to high schools to let high school students take college courses while in high school. The kids get college and high school credit for the work.

Kareem is doing it this year. He's only taking English and PE at the high school. Everything else will be done at the local community college. (He's starting a seminar for his chemistry class today.)

I just wanted to post this here because it's not a heavily advertised benefit and some of you might have kids of the right age to do this. So, it doesn't hurt to ask your local school district what kind of policies they have about dual enrollment and if there is any financial aid for it.

Magick1 · #2 08-19-2008, 11:41 AM

That's pretty cool. I know they did not offer this where I attended high school.

**amykhar** · #3 08-19-2008, 11:46 AM

One key point - your kid doesn't have to be a straight A student to do this. One of the goals of the program in PA is to get students who might not go on to college to do so. As such, they aren't necessarily going for the kids with A's who would probably move on to college anyway.

*emeleel* · #4 08-19-2008, 12:35 PM

Lots of places offer this, in fact a lot of homeschoolers take advantage of it in order to make sure their children get full instruction in the high school years when it can be harder for the parents to teach particular subjects. I imagine we'll be doing it in a few years if Auburn offers it, which I think they do.

Back when I was in high school, one of the local large community colleges offered summer courses for good-grade kids, but it didn't count toward our high school credits, more's the pity. I believe it did count as college credit, though.

**Prepoia**[$] · #5 08-19-2008, 01:13 PM

Things like that are offered in this area too. Good tip, Amy and it's great for the students.

**conradd** · #6 08-19-2008, 01:17 PM

That's one of the projects I'm part of, here in Oregon.

There are several ways that this can happen, depending on how the high school partners with area community colleges.

If a high school teacher can be certified as community college faculty, the high school class curriculum can be tailored to mirror a community college class. Students can enroll for community college credit (here, it's $25 a class, although this can be waived) and get both high school and community college credit for the same class. If a class isn't offered at a high school, the student can enroll at the community college and the high school should pay the tuition for the student.

It's a wonderful benefit - some of our students can finish high school with at least one year of college finished and paid for.

**mtomm**[$] · #7 08-19-2008, 01:41 PM

Quote:

If a high school teacher can be certified as community college faculty,

This is what my sister is doing at her high school.

**sycoticmind29**[$] · #8 08-28-2008, 02:29 AM

My High School also has AP courses which offer a test at the end of the year, and if you score high enough, you get college credits for that subject, I was actually planning on taking an AP biology course before I signed up for the dual enrollment.

**hadassahchana**[$] · #9 08-28-2008, 02:42 PM

This is awesome! #2 has been asking to take advanced maths and chemistry, and I think a community college may be just the thing for him.I'd have to drive him, but it would be so awesome for him.

We decided against AP classes for #1, although he took some of the AP tests on his own and received credits. However, it seems that few of the AP credits counted toward his major, and I won't be doing that for any of the other boys.

Kareem, do you like attending classes at the CC?

**Prepoia**[$] · #10 08-28-2008, 09:35 PM

I was pretty sure that you actually had to take the AP classes before a college would grant credit for passing the test. There are some college credits that students can try taking a test and passing the content and therefore getting credit for them but they are offered through the university. I know Oakland University offered some of these when I went there.

**jgibson2**[$] · #11 08-28-2008, 10:23 PM

You have to take AP classes to get AP credit, but you can get credit without classes by taking the CLEP exams.

**thinkerlady**[$] · #12 08-29-2008, 12:32 AM

If the AP course/test you take is your major in college, some colleges will still make you take the course over on their territory. They will give you the 3 credits, but since it is your major, they want you to have the course "in their house". This happened to my son with Calculus.

**sycoticmind29**[$] · #13 08-29-2008, 08:18 PM

Quote:

hadassahchana said

Kareem, do you like attending classes at the CC?

My drawing class makes me miss my old art teacher, the lady I have now is boring and is all about a book on drawing, if I wanted to learn how to draw from a book, I would have just looked at one of the many I have sitting in my room.

Chemistry is fun though, I have been interested in sciences for a while now, and the teacher I have isn't too serious about it, so the class environment is pretty fun. My only problem is that we are just starting so we are mostly talking about the basic math, which I still know from my high school chem class, and the four day seminar I went to before classes even started, so I find other ways to entertain myself.

**mjfrombuffalo**[$] · #14 08-29-2008, 09:19 PM

Crossword puzzles were my time-killer of choice in college. Looks like you're thinking, looks like you're taking notes, and the time/thought spent on each clue is brief enough that you can check back in on the lecture frequently enough to know when you have to pay attention

magenta321 · #15 08-30-2008, 10:35 AM

Oh, I drew fruit in my margins. I think it was because I was generally drinking something fruity in class, and I like to draw grapes. Most fruits are easy to draw.

I had a really funny prof for philosophy of education. He was from Italy and had a cute little accent and would get so excited to hear himself talk. He would say the same things every class, like "Educate is from the latin word, ed-u-carrrrrr-ray, which, means..." and he would talk about "extraaaaaaaaaaaa-po-lating." He would also wear several chalk marks on his jacket by the end of class.

Eventually we started a pool on the floor with the money from everyone that sat in my section. We'd take bets on how many "ed-u-carrrrrrr-ray"s he'd say, and how many "extraaaaaaaaaa-po-lating" and all his other strange words. Whoever was the closest would get the pool on that given word. We also had a pool on chalk marks on his jacket and face. It kept us paying attention when we otherwise would have just glazed over. We looked like we were taking notes because he would string his keyphrases into long sentences, sometimes using most of the words we were keeping track of. We all kept hatch marks for every word, that way at the end of class we could compare and no one could skew the data toward their bet.