<p>I did some reading up on the College Now Program and it looks terrific. Seems many states have or are starting them. Sadly, my home state of Wyoming doesn’t appear to have the program. But I am also wondering how the scheduling/transportation works. My understanding is that 11th and 12th graders actually attend classes/activities on the campuses of the participating local colleges. Seems the programs are concentrated in urban areas which makes sense.</p>
<p>Our school offers both AP and dual enrollment, which are cc classes taught in our high school. Some of the cc classes are basically alternate versions of fairly similar AP classes, except that students have to purchase their own texts. As far as I can tell, the AP’s are a little more popular than the corresponding dual classes. I know we’ve already spent more on texts for my daughter’s dual class than we would spend for an AP exam, which isn’t necessarily even required for her AP classes. She does enjoy her dual class, but it’s more a matter of a good teacher and interesting subject than the fact that it’s dual rather than AP. She likes most of her AP classes also.</p>
<p>Taking classes on a college campus sounds good but it requires a huge commitment from families, students and schools, which in many cases simply isn’t possible. My daughter did it this fall, and we had to deal with transportation issues (ended up getting her driver’s license and buying a car–this would not have been possible in her junior year), parking issues (ended up paying hourly in a garage), scheduling issues (just had to take a deep breath and hope that her schedule for her high school classes would work out and we wouldn’t know this until after her college class was underway and it was too late to do anything), EC issues (she lost leadership opportunities she might have had because she couldn’t attend meetings/events), time issues (an additional 3 hours per week of travel which didn’t help an extremely busy senior), and calendar issues (the high school and college calendars were not aligned, meaning that she had almost no days off to visit colleges).</p>
<p>Just wanted to add, taking college classes is really only possible if a high school uses some form of block scheduling (semester-based or at least A-B). If you have regular (50 min) classes which rotate around in different time slots on different days, it’s going to be awfully difficult to mesh with a typical college schedule. Many high schools will not be willing to give up their preferred scheduling to accommodate the desire of a small number of students to attend college courses. Consider also that the college schedule needs to mesh. My daughter is starting two study halls this spring, because none of the college classes she would have liked to take this spring were offered in the only time slot she had available.</p>
<p>My limited experience with 1 AP course that my oldest took, wasn’t good. APUSH met 1 1/2 hours 5 days a week all year. The homework took at least that amount of time. So, she was spending at least 15 hours a week all year for 6 college credits. That one course took more work then an entire semester of college. It was insane. I refused to allow her to take anymore AP courses. Oh, and while her college has accepted the credits, they only transfer as elective credits. It makes more sense to me to do the duel enrollment at community college. Unfortunately, it does effect the class rank. My dd was in the top 10% of her class, with only one AP. My son, however is at one of the top high schools, and without AP’s he will not have a good class rank. He’s only in 9th grade, but they are talking and talking and pushing these kids for AP’s. I am not a fan. They push the every kid to take at least one. My friend let her son take one, and when he was struggling, they wouldn’t let him transfer out. She was ticked.</p>
<p>High schools vary a lot in how the AP classes are taught. Our AP’s meet for 3.75 hours a week. In a school with double that in-class time, there really shouldn’t have to be such a large homework load.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Really. Costs are offset on a course by course basis from what would normally go to the high school. For example, let say the state normally pays each high school 1500 per pupil per semester. If that student enrolls 1/2 time in PSEO then the school gets $750 and the college gets $750. I made up those numbers, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Students are assigned both a college couselor (from the clollege) and a HS counselor who are supposed to assist with this, but its a challenge. In particular in our case the college semesters run o a different schedule than HS, at times overlapping. </p>
<p>don’t forget that since DE courses are real college courses, they contain real college grades which they stay with the student forever (unlike AP test scores and AP grades). What that means is that grad school apps, and moreover professional schools, will use those DE grades for admissions. If they are all (or mostly) A’s, the DE student has a big leg up. But if the student succumbs to Senior-itis and tanks the second semester of senior year, those ‘poor’ DE grades are permanent.</p>