[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/TheGreen_12192014_DualEnroll.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media's Tom Byrne and contributor Larry Nagengast discuss A.I. du Pont High School's Early College Academy.]
As eighth graders in the Red Clay Consolidated School District settle on their high school choices, Alexis I. du Pont High School Principal Kevin Palladinetti is relishing an opportunity he hasn’t had before.
“We’re beginning to have conversations with eighth grade students about the college-going experience,” he says.
The reason for Palladinetti’s excitement is the Early College Academy, a new program the school will begin next fall in partnership with Wilmington University.
“We’ll be able to talk about college live, about applying for college and being successful in college. Creating that mindset is the beauty behind the Early College Academy,” Palladinetti says.
Taking college-level courses for credit is hardly new in Delaware. Almost every high school in the state offers some Advanced Placement courses, and 25 public high schools have liked with a college or university to offer dual-enrollment classes. And, even with the Early College Academy, A.I. du Pont will continue to offer AP and dual-enrollment classes.
What makes the approach at A.I. du Pont unique, at least for Delaware, is that the group of incoming freshmen who are selected for the program will begin taking college-level classes in their freshman year, with the classes ramping up in intensity by the time they are seniors. By the time they graduate, participating students should accumulate 28 college credits. Then, Wilmington University will offer them a scholarship to take a three-credit “bridge course” on its campus so they can start college full-time as sophomores — knocking a year off their studies and, more importantly for many, their tuition bills.
Palladinetti and his staff have not yet determined precise criteria for choosing students for the program. However, incoming freshmen (including choice program applicants) must complete a special application, available on the school’s website, by Jan. 15. The application requires, among other things, an essay and teacher recommendations. Between 25 and 60 students will be chosen, after their academic, discipline and attendance records are reviewed. “All these things matter when you want to take ninth-graders and expose them to the rigor of a college-level course,” Palladinetti says.
“We see this as a great opportunity for our students, not just as a pipeline for Wilmington University,” Palladinetti says. “Participating students will be strong students, interested in the University of Delaware and in schools outside of Delaware.”
The program will start slowly – with a one-credit course on study skills or time management and a three-credit health course offered over the entire freshman year, rather than over a semester, as it would be taught on campus. As sophomores, students would take college one-semester courses stretched over the full academic year. As juniors and seniors, the pace would become more rigorous — no more stretching the duration of the classes.
“We realize that they’re still high school students. When they’re starting out, they will need more seat time to complete the class,” says Lisa Lombardozzi of Wilmington University’s Partnership Office, who has helped set up the A.I. du Pont program.
More Coverage: Dual enrollment options vary across First State high schools
As with dual-enrollment and AP, courses offered would be of the entry-level variety, covering subjects like sociology, psychology, criminal justice and government, Palladinetti and Lombardozzi say. College-level English and math courses would wait until senior year, to ensure that students have a firm grounding in those subjects, they say.
In most cases, A.I. du Pont faculty would do the teaching, provided their credentials meet Wilmington University’s standards. If the high school does not have a qualified teacher on its staff, Wilmington University would assign someone from its faculty.
“This will be a little harder for us [than dual enrollment],” says Peter Bailey, Wilmington University’s vice president for external affairs. “When you’re only doing one or two classes at a high school, you can usually find a faculty member on their staff who would qualify as an adjunct professor with us. [With more classes] we will likely have to send out some of our faculty.”
If a qualified faculty member isn’t available during regular school hours, it’s possible that a class could be taught online, with students meeting in A.I. du Pont’s computer lab or its distance learning lab.
By their senior year, Palladinetti says, some students might travel to Wilmington University’s main campus near New Castle to take one or two of their classes.
In addition to giving students the opportunity to earn college credits, the Early College Academy will offer other benefits to A.I. du Pont students and faculty. Students will have online access to a certain Wilmington University services, including tutoring and reviews of research papers. High school faculty teaching academy classes will be invited to faculty development seminars at the university.
The university is charging A.I. du Pont $2,000 for each class offered, plus a $60 per student registration fee, Bailey says. The school district will be responsible for purchasing textbooks.
“The goal of this program is to show students that they can be successful,” Bailey says. “We don’t want to have a program where students are failing.”
The new program at A.I. du Pont is another example of a renewed statewide emphasis on what Shana Payne, director of the Higher Education Office in the state Department of Education, calls “meeting students where they are.”
For students who aren’t performing at a college-ready level in high school, it means developing transitional courses, like the new Foundations of Math course, that give students a second chance to show that they have what it takes to succeed in college, Payne says.
For others, it means broadening their options. “Students thrive better when they have more opportunities,” she says.
That philosophy accounts in part for the rapid expansion of dual-enrollment partnerships this year by Delaware Technical Community College — from 13 high schools to 24, according to Stephanie Smith, the college’s vice president for academic affairs.
To encourage participation in its program, Delaware Tech this year changed its fee structure, reducing the cost to high schools to $2,000 for a course with 25 students enrolled (20 students if it is writing-intensive) or $4,200 if it is taught online or by a college faculty member.
About 90 percent of the students who took dual-enrollment classes through Delaware Tech last year received passing grades, Smith says.
“If a student can take a course that meets high school requirements and gets them college credit, it helps them hit the ground running,” Smith says. “It helps us because it will improve the completion rate for the college, and it will help the students get into their major field of study even sooner.”
Sussex Tech in Georgetown is one high school that is pleased with what amounts to a dual dual-enrollment arrangement. In addition to a partnership with Delaware Tech, it is now in the second year of a collaboration with Widener University, based in Chester, Pa., through which it now offers 11 college classes. Next fall, Sussex Tech Principal John Demby says, it will add a college-level chemistry class.
About 275 Sussex Tech juniors and seniors are taking one or more college courses, with some taught by Sussex Tech faculty and others online by Widener faculty.
“It’s mathematically possible to leave Sussex Tech as a second-semester college freshman with credits from Delaware Tech and Widener,” Demby says.
The growing popularity of dual-enrollment classes, and the success rate of students who take them, demonstrates that getting a head start on college is no longer limited to the best and the brightest.
“Dual enrollment has a lot of benefits for many high school students,” Smith says, “not just those at the highest levels.”