State officials may seek to make dual enrollment, as well as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate testing, available to more high schools students in an effort to allow more students to earn college credit during high school and prepare students for college coursework. This program, officials said, would close minority and low-income achievement gaps, in addition to reducing the cost of higher education.
Speakers who met during a meeting of the Governor's Commission on Higher Education Reform, Innovation and Investment last Friday discussed the benefits and obstacles of both dual enrollment and advanced testing.
Asst. Education Prof. Heather Wathington advocated the implementation of dual enrollment, AP and IB courses to better prepare students for post-secondary education.\n"Statewide, over 68,000 high school students take courses for college credit, and 83 percent of them do so through dual enrollment, in which classes are taken at either a local community college or through an approved course at their high school for college and high school credit," she said. "Scholars and practitioners are beginning to believe that participation in dual enrollment courses encourages [students] to enroll and to be more likely to succeed once they are [in college]."
Wathington and several other speakers encouraged the state to consider policies that would provide incentives for students to take dual enrollment classes. The benefits of such programs extend not only to students and their parents, but also to colleges and the public, Wathington said. Although dual enrollment reduces the cost of obtaining a higher education degree in the long run, it cannot incentivize students if there is no state funding available to pay for the college-level classes offered, she said.\nCharles Ross, dean of the Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences at Longwood University, however, had words of caution about such initiatives, explaining that some students entering college with dual enrollment credit "have not been prepared" for higher-level courses. Despite the system's potential merits, Ross advocated courses with a standardized exit exam as a means of earning college credit.
"If there's a weakness to [dual enrollment], the weakness is that - compared to AP and IB - there is no nationally normed test," he said.
On the contrary, Superintendent Paul Stapleton of Halifax County Public Schools provided a convincing testament to the success of dual enrollment. At Halifax County's lone high school, 91 percent of graduating seniors matriculate with some sort of college credit at an average of 10 credits earned, he said.
Stapleton said the main advantage of his school's program was the value that it offers the residents of Halifax County - many of the program's graduates enter their postsecondary institutions with two years of credit, meaning students can take more advanced classes or graduate early. Moreover, minority participation in the program was disproportionately high compared to national and state averages. Low-income groups, like the 60 percent of the county on a free or reduced-price lunch program, also receive an invaluable resource.
Officials also discussed paying for student's AP tests to encourage more high school students to take the tests and thereby better prepare students for college.
Paul Nichols, president of Virginia Advanced Study Strategies, explained that his association pays the AP testing fees for students and school systems in the Tidewater region. Virginia Advanced Study Strategies, which is privately funded, oversaw a system where any student scoring a three or above on an AP test received $100 for each such score.
"A number of [students leaving college] are leaving because they are not well prepared," Nichols said. "The research shows that even if [AP students] get a non-qualifying score, with the rigor that they are challenged with, they will do better when they enter the [college world]."
Subsequent committee discussions will occur in October and November.
-Kevin Mead contributed to this article.
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