College Credit Plus approaches third year in Ohio

By Kiana Duncan, Nicholas Adkins, and Nicole Ciccarelli

College Credit Plus is the result of a dual credit legislation passed by the Ohio legislature in 2014 that allows students to earn college credits at no charge while they are still attending high school or middle school. Three years into the program, it is still not clear whether the benefits outweigh the shortcomings of the program.

The idea of students earning college credits before their high school graduation is not a new concept in Ohio. From 1989 to 2015, students had the ability to participate in the Post Secondary Enrollment Options Program (PSEOP).

There are several key differences between the former option and College Credit Plus (CCP). School districts are required to hold informational sessions every year to provide details on the program to interested students and parents. The cost of textbooks, formally shouldered by the students attending the classes in PSEOP, have now been shifted to the local school districts. School districts also have the ability to have their teachers accredited by local universities to teach certain college level classes at the school districts so that students do not have to physically leave their high school for classes.

“Gov. Kasich has been working with his cabinet members the past few years,” College Credit Plus director Larisa Harper said. “Based on the estimated work force in Ohio and the number of people with [degrees and certifications], if we don’t do anything to help increase the number of people with certificates and degrees, we will not have enough employees for what the employers need.”

CCP is part of many education reforms that have been pushed by Gov. John Kasich during his time in office. Others include the proposal to allow community colleges to offer bachelor degrees, which expired during the 2016 election year, and a proposal in his 2017 budget that would force universities to cover the cost of textbooks that exceed $300 for any one semester of classes a student attends.

“Dual enrollment is happening in every state in the U.S., but in Ohio, we have one of the only programs where students pay for no tuition and for no books,” Harper said. “We are far ahead of our peer states, who haven’t figure out the financial balance as well as having a wide spread program for students.”

This is a sentiment that is not shared by all, however. State Rep. Kathleen Clyde said that education may be a very partisan issue in the state legislature and all legislators seem to agree with the aim of CCP to lower costs for students, but the funding of the program is a point of contention between her and her Republican peers.

“The only problem is there are some significant cost to the school districts and to the universities that were not covered by the state when they enacted the program,” Clyde said. “Democrats are generally not happy with how the Republicans have failed to adequately fund both K-12 education and higher education and this program is kind of another part of that failure.”

The funding for the CCP program is paid in a variety of ways. School districts are forced to pick up a significant portion of the costs and universities have to allow for reduced rates to CCP students. Kasich allocated $10 million in his last two-year state budget to the new program as well.

“I have heard from districts who have taken large cuts in their funding from the state and are having a difficult time adding this program to that environment of increased state cuts,” Clyde said.

Southeast School District Superintendent Robert Dunn said that while the additional costs on schools may be an unintended consequence, it is a real one.

“We don’t have a ton of money and most public schools do not have a ton of extra money,” Dunn said.

Dunn said that, despite the costs of CCP, it has pushed his district to offer more programs to students looking to begin their college early. Southeast is a smaller district in a rural area of Portage County.

“Our kids can get twenty-one college credits just by staying on campus,” Dunn said. “We have an agreement with several colleges where our teachers that are here at our school get accredited by the college and the college then will give our students credit for taking the class here.”

“If you go to a school district it’s more rural and they don’t offer college level coursework, it is is a great opportunity for them,” Aurora School District Superintendent Pat Ciccantelli said.

Ciccantelli said that schools like Aurora, which is part of a higher median income suburb of Cleveland on the Northern edge of Portage County, already offer programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) courses and that the additional cost of sending students to universities hurts his district’s ability to offer the programs it has always offered to students not participating in CCP.

“I think it should be means-tested,” said Ciccantelli. “In other words, you’ve got kids whose parents are very capable of providing support for them financially to get college classes and there’s a cost for College Credit Plus and so the whole community [and] all the taxpayers are paying for that child’s college credit.”

Ciccantelli said that the funding that is being used on those students whose families already have the means to pay for college could be spent on students who may need more assistance and support. He said that he does not know if the funding for the program is always going to the students that actually need it.

Another common area of concern is the ability of students in 7th and 8th-grade to participate in CCP. While most colleges still require ACT scores for acceptance into their CCP programs, some worry that these students are simply too young to attend college.

“Is it really realistic that there are 7th and 8th-graders who really need access to college level material,” Ciccantelli said.

Those kids, I think, still need the schooling experience and the socialization experience so allowing them to remove themselves from [the district] school, whether on the online option or actually going to campus just seems too early,” Dunn said

Dunn acknowledged the benefit to parents through his own experience.

“I have a daughter going to Kent State,” Dunn said. “If we could have cut that cost down, if she could have gotten a year of college credit, you know, it could have saved us ten thousand dollars.”

The debate over CCP continues and even though most agree that the intention of the program is a good one, not all agree on the intricacies of how the program is funded.