Dual Enrollment or AP English?

I have been pondering the impact of dual enrollment for years and have heard all of the arguments for and against.  I know the dividing line. It seems that those who express concern or suggest alternatives are not heard over the roar of the dual enrollment train as it speeds ahead at breakneck speed. Many see it as the only train on the only track available for linking lower and higher educational systems. 

The Department of Education declared in its report "Other attempts to help students enter and succeed in college are based on a body of research demonstrating that postsecondary success is predicated on both rigorous academic preparation and a clear understanding of the expectations in college (cf. Venezia, Kirst, and Antonio, 2003). This approach suggests that high schools and colleges should work together, and that blurring the distinction between the two education sectors may help students to be more successful. As such, policymakers should seek to promote programs and policies that help link secondary and postsecondary education.  Dual enrollment is one type of program that does just this, and which appears to have grown rapidly at the program level." ("State Dual Enrollment Policies: Addressing Access and Quality," 2004) (italics added for emphasis)

Here at Yavapai College, it is full speed ahead with our dual enrollment classes, with more and more disciplines being asked, or forced, to get on board. Our website says that dual enrollment allows "college ready students to participate in accelerated college level coursework." But is that true? Are our offerings on high school campuses truly "accelerated"?  Our website says we offer the "same challenging college curriculum." What I see in ENG 101 and ENG 102 offerings is more of what the Department of Education calls "blurring the distinction between the two education sectors," rather than promoting "a clear understanding of the expectations of college."

I am not opposed to allowing high school students to attempt college credit courses, but is that what we are offering?  I did some basic math. The students on our college campus receive 37.5 hours of seat time in ENG 101 classes to achieve our learning outcomes. Students on the high school campuses are receiving more like 72 hours of seat time (18 weeks x 4 hours/week, plus or minus), nearly double the amount of time to achieve the same outcomes. Yes, these high school students assess at the same level as on-campus students. Of course they do! They have twice the amount of time to learn what they need to learn. Would those students be as successful in 15 weeks on our campus? I wonder. Would our on-campus students be more successful with twice the amount of class time? Surely they would.

Are we are giving these high school students "college experience" in the true sense of the word? No. We need to be honest about what we are doing: we are giving them an AP writing course that receives college credit. Even the atmosphere speaks to a high school class.  The students are sitting in high school rooms, with high school instructors, taking ENG 101 during regular high school hours. And ENG 101 is linked to senior English. If the students don't pass ENG 101, they have lost high school credit as well. How much pressure does this put on those high school English instructors? Are they able to maintain the rigor, or do they find themselves trying to help students pass at all cost in order to meet graduation requirements?

How many high school seniors are actually ready for college?  According to my estimates based upon the numbers of seniors in our high schools and the number of ENG 101 sections we are offering (18 throughout the county), about 1/4 of our high school seniors are ready to take college-level writing classes. That is 25% of all the students who have completed their junior year. Perhaps, if so many are ready for college courses, we should let them graduate after their junior year and come on over to Yavapai. This would be the "accelerated" approach we promise on our website. 

As the Department of Education says, "Dual enrollment, particularly when it is located at the high school, is often criticized for not offering students a true postsecondary experience. Policymakers must find ways to address this criticism and ensure that dual enrollment courses are more than watered-down college courses. Although some states seek to do this by regulating course offerings, requiring dual enrollment teachers to undergo professional development or by requiring that high school students attend class with matriculated college students, such regulations are not common. Ensuring the quality of students’ dual enrollment experiences is important not only for the students themselves, but because it serves to maintain the integrity of postsecondary education throughout the state system. Dilution of quality may reflect poorly on postsecondary credit generally." (italics added for emphasis) This is our dilemma here at Yavapai College. If the high school students have twice the time to achieve the same outcomes, is that not "watered down"? Is that truly as rigorous as a regular college class? We seem to be promoting the old "Yavapai High" reputation in these classes. 

One of the past arguments for promoting dual enrollment was that our college needed to offer this valuable service to our taxpayers. I never sensed an angry mob outside our doors demanding dual enrollment, but somehow the state legislature decided that the outcry was so strong it mandated it. Even so, every college gets to decide what will be offered and how, and yet, the college faculty concerns go unheard or ignored. For example, we in the English department have argued for having the high school students who take ENG 101 on their own campus come to our campuses to take ENG 102 to ensure a real college experience. This has been met with resistance year after year as being inconvenient for the students. What is a little inconvenience in comparison with maintaining the "integrity of postsecondary education"? This argument borders on a entitlement mentality.  They want it their way, so we have to accommodate, even at the risk of our own reputation. And we have lost a valuable opportunity to "link secondary and postsecondary education" in a way that students get accustomed to the "rigors" of higher education.

We were also told in the beginning that dual enrollment would encourage more students to continue their education at Yavapai College. The Verde Independent reporter Yvonne Gonzalez reported, "The college donates more than $100,000 yearly in foregone tuition to dual enrollment high school students,...Dual enrollment on both the east and west sides of the county have increased by 40 and 27 percent respectively, according to Hughes' numbers." (7/1/2014) This must be a huge benefit to our taxpayers but at what cost to us and to our reputation? Will these students continue their education at Yavapai College? The article went on to say, "Hughes said these kids are 'a little more likely,' by about a handful of percentage points, to attend Yavapai College as students....'There are probably greater numbers from those schools too that are going on and choosing other institutions.'" Basically, we are offering tuition-free courses to students who are already planning to go to college and who will most likely choose a four-year institution.

Isn't this like giving tax advantages to the rich? We have not furthered the cause of higher education; we have not encouraged the underprivileged to experience college. Instead, we have subsidized students who are already planning to go to college. And if this is truly a service to our taxpayers, then shouldn't we be offering free tuition to all local high school graduates who pass the Compass test? That would be true equality of access.

While we focus all these resources on high school students who are already planning to go to college, who is focusing on the lower 25% of Arizona high school students, the ones who drop out? Yes, we are offering the top 25% of the senior class free tuition while the lower 25% are shuffled out the back door. Wouldn't our resources go a lot further in helping these students to obtain a better education leading to better careers? That was the original vision for community colleges.

Education: A Distraction to Their Distractions

The Friday morning Student Success class was rolling along. Scott Nardo, the adviser connected to our class, was presenting the dilemma of distractions as we discussed time management. The students had brainstormed in small groups, sharing their most common distractions to studying.  Now they were reporting out to Scott who was madly writing on the whiteboard all of the typical culprits.  "Cell phones!...Netflix...Video games...parties....women! (snickers around the room)...pizza....Internet ...Facebook...jobs..." Once the contributions began to wane, we ended up with about thirty items on the board. Then Scott said, "Let's prioritize these distractions. Which ones would you be willing to give up?" 

Utter silence...blank faces.

Here is an issue we face as instructors working with the new generation: What we see as distractions they see as integral parts of their lives. When asked if he would be willing to turn off his cell phone to get uninterrupted sleep, one student replied, "I can't. It is my alarm clock." And yes, he admitted that, if the phone pinged at any time during the night, he would respond to the text before falling back to sleep. For whatever reason, the distractions can't (or won't) be shut off, put away, or ignored. Their lives are filled with entertainment and connections 24/7. When they were in high school, their time for these distractions might have been limited by high school schedules and parental guidance. Now that they are in college and looking at all of that free time in their schedules, is it any wonder that students report playing video games for twelve to twenty hours a week? To these students, college becomes the distraction. Annie Murphy Paul is quoted in the article as saying, "Multitasking while doing academic work — which is very, very common among young people — leads to spottier, shallower, less flexible learning" (Sullivan, NBC News).

My point is not to gripe. Rather, in light of this, we need to consider how the distractions impact our classrooms. In one sense, we are challenged to create assignments and teach in ways that reinforce the intrinsic value of learning. Students don't arrive on campus already knowing this. Rethinking our instructional modes is not an overwhelming task, but it does require that we be more mindful of how we utilize the time within and beyond the classroom. We cannot deliver the same content in the same manner as years past and assume that our students will get caught up in the spell of our enthusiasm. One quote I gleaned from a CCSSE presentation at the 2013 FYE conference speaks to this: "If a student has never experienced high levels of engagement in high school, how can we assume that all of a sudden they will be highly engaged in college?” Many of our students have misguided ideas about education in general and about college specifically. It is up to us to communicate the new expectations.

If there ever was a course that students would consider a distraction, it would be the Student Success class. We are asking them to take three credits out of their already busy schedule to study something that they think they already know how to do. During the first few weeks of class, that attitude accompanied many of the students as they slouched into their chairs and tried to surreptitiously check their phones. Not all the students, mind you--some came with a desperate hunger for ideas that would help them succeed in this new college environment. However, in either case, I knew I needed to make the course lively and practical, switching up activities, throwing in good videos, promoting self-reflection, etc., but as entertaining as that might be, it could never be enough. I think one of the most important things I do is the intentional infusion of the reasoning behind every activity. These students need to know that this class is worth their time above and beyond Netflix and video games. With each new class, attitudes are coming around because more and more students are getting the idea, not only about the value of this class, but about the value of choosing to devote time to their college education.

My point is these students do not know how to be college students. We need to "convince" them that time spent focused on their learning in college is worth the distraction from all of those other "distractions."  In high school, most of their learning took place within the walls of their classrooms; college is the opposite. They don't arrive on campus knowing that we expect most of the learning to occur on their own time and are shocked as the assignments and reading pile up for each class. One of my STU students told me he did not have time to do my assignments because he was already loaded up with work for other classes. When I looked at his weekly diary, he had studied 12 hours that week for five 3-credit classes. He had also played several ping pong games, viewed a couple of movies, and had time to hang out with his friends. His choices reflected the fact that he was not willing to give up any of the latter in order to study more for his classes. That is the lingering attitude coming onto our campus. Thus, part of our job has become helping students understand the culture of this society called college.

I wonder if in our attempt to "market" college we have given the wrong impression of the purpose of and commitment to a quality college education. No matter the answer to that, we instructors need to be diligent to prepare our students for the requirements for being successful not only in our specific classes, but for all their classes.

Any Readers in Your Classes?

Remember when we set ninth grade reading level as the minimum for most of our Gen Ed courses? It has been over three years now. I would love to hear from instructors as to how that has worked out in your classes. Since most of the books we use are written at the 13.0 or 14.0 level (and some are even higher), that means students are facing text with a sophistication and vocabulary level that they may have never been exposed to before. Are they understanding what they are reading? Or are they avoiding the reading assigned?

I have been teaching the lower level reading courses ENG 083 and 083 for four years now.  During that time, I have tried Humanities theme-based readers, biographies, fiction, and actual reading textbooks. When I used the readers, many of the students could not understand the essays well enough to determine the thesis, to outline the content, and to examine the arguments. As a result, I have resorted to finding my own selection of articles and essays that I think they will be able to comprehend.

The problem with the common published reading textbooks is that they continue to review skills that the students have already grasped. For example, my students are now working with a chapter that is having them find the main idea sentence for paragraphs taken from college textbooks. How many of you as you read are tearing apart every paragraph? I certainly don't want students thinking that this is something they should be doing for every paragraph they encounter for the rest of their lives, but I do want them to be able to grasp the thesis point of what they are reading and find the main supporting points, whether they are reading a sociology textbook or a newspaper editorial.  

Here is the dilemma. The students in my classes have the basics down. They can read sentences and paragraphs. They can sound out words, and they know how to use dictionaries (not that they are using them frequently). However, they do not know how to wrestle with new information, with arguments, both well-founded and fallacious, and with author tone and purpose. They also do not know how to adapt their reading skills for various disciplines. Reading a chemistry textbook requires a different style of reading than reading a history book which should be read differently than a novel. Most of our students do not have that level of sophistication. For them, reading is more passive than active, eyes moving across the page in the correct direction. Comprehension requires active reading, engaged with and questioning new information. Critical thinking needs be practiced as they adapt to new reading situations. This is not covered well in most reading textbooks.

The College Reading and Learning Association just published a white paper that speaks to this very issue:

An important aspect of increasing the effectiveness of developmental reading is tied to pedagogical choices. It has been estimated that as much as 85% of college learning is dependent upon active, careful reading (Simpson & Nist, 2000). The average reading load for college students is between 150-200 pages a week (Burrell, Tao, Simpson, & Mendez-Berrueta, 1996). However, much of the instruction in developmental reading courses has traditionally centered on a transmission model of teaching isolated reading skills, such as selecting main idea, identifying fact and opinion statements, and other sub-skills (Armstrong & Newman, 2011; Maxwell, 1997), despite calls for a more strategic or process-based approach (Simpson, Stahl, & Francis, 2004). Research results on skills-based instruction show little to no improvement on students’ reading ability upon completion of these remedial courses (Merisotis & Phipps, 2000). Such an approach cannot adequately prepare students because the tasks of college vary widely across disciplines and purposes and students are expected to engage and interpret text of increasing difficulty (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006; Eckert, 2011). (6-7)

After reading this paper, I was reaffirmed regarding what I was intuiting about the typical developmental reading textbooks. The approach to skills is inefficient, unsuccessful in the long run, and actually aimed the wrong direction. I and my students get bored quickly with the mundane tasks and assignments. Thus, I am ready once again to scrap the textbook for a more holistic approach to reading instruction. to me, the main goal of instruction should be to build up the reading fluency of our students. The kind of reading sophistication that our students need takes time and immersion in written text.

Notice that the quote above says the "average reading load for college students is 150-200 pages a week." Many of the students enrolling in our college for the first time have not read that many pages in a year, much less "turned a page" (I would include all of the good reading to be found in the Internet) during the summer prior to classes. I would propose that this is not the fault of their prior education, but a reflection of our culture: our society does not encourage reading as a valuable activity. Our students have so many more "interesting" options that are far more social in nature as seen in one of my favorites by Scott and Borgman:



I will be going back to working on building that reading fluency, using the most interesting texts that I can find that will promote active reading and enjoyment. If I can get them hooked on the value (... and dare I say "joy") of reading, then I will have achieved my personal goal for the classes.

Having said all of this, I would encourage you to consider how you might utilize those first few reading assignments each semester to train your students how to read in your discipline. How does a biologist read scientific texts? How does a historian read a primary document? How does a sociologist read a research study? Trust me, our students don't know, and one semester in a reading class will not prepare them for every field of study.

If you have a typical 3-5 page reading, be it an essay or a chapter in a book, that you assign to your students,  I would love to have a copy to use in my classes. In the meantime, I am going to look for books and ebooks, articles and essays, that will help develop reading fluency.