Enrollment in McHenry County high school dual credit programs explodes

CRYSTAL LAKE – More than 500 high school freshmen and sophomores at half of McHenry County’s high schools are set to get their first taste of college this coming fall.

Dual credit courses, which are classes where students earn both high school and college credit, have previously been territory for the county’s juniors and seniors, but a computer literacy course being offered at seven high schools this fall will change that.

McHenry County College had to get a waiver from the Illinois Community College Board to offer the classes to underclassmen, making it one of a handful in the state to get the OK, according to school officials.

The move is the next step in McHenry County College’s growing dual credit program, which has seen the number of students enrolled skyrocket from 33 in the 2009-10 school year when only two courses were offered to 916 students enrolled in 15 courses this current school year, according to college data.

Those numbers just include the students taking college-level courses at their high schools, not the high school students who are taking college courses on MCC’s campus. Those students would add another 1,374 students to the roster.

The growth started in 2010 at a meeting of the area’s high school superintendents, the Regional Office of Education’s superintendent and college officials where they discussed a problem, said Tony Capalbo, MCC’s associate dean of college and career readiness.

More than 60 percent of students entering McHenry County College from the area’s high schools had to take remedial math, he said. That meant they were paying for a class for which they were receiving no college credit.

Plus students who took remedial courses, often called developmental courses at the college level, are less likely to earn their degree, according to the Community College Research Center’s 2014 report.

Only 28 percent of community college students who take one of these courses earn a degree within eight years compared to 43 percent of students who don’t have to take these courses, the report said.

A forum of teachers and administrators followed and so did some changes.

High school juniors were given a practice version of MCC’s math placement test before they registered for their senior year’s classes, Capalbo said. (Illinois only requires high-schoolers to take three years of math to graduate.)

And some high schools started offering a senior year math class based off MCC’s developmental courses, which if they passed, automatically moved them past those classes and straight into college-level math, he said.

The college also started to push dual credit.

“Part of the reason MCC advocates for dual credit and pushes for it is that the best way to prepare students for college is to have a very rigorous high school curriculum,” Capalbo said. “That’s why so many administrators push for [Advanced Placement].”

But there’s a significant difference between Advanced Placement and dual credit courses.

While AP courses tend to focus on the general education classes most university students take during their first two years, dual credit tends to be more varied.

About half of the dual credit courses taught in the state of Illinois are general education, but the other half are career and technical education classes, Capalbo said.

Johnsburg, Marengo and Woodstock high schools have dual credit automotive technology and nursing assistant courses. Woodstock High School offers Introduction to Manufacturing as well as computer numerically controlled machine classes. Marengo High School has two upper-level computer-aided design courses.

Woodstock District 200 specifically zeroed in on this area because its AP program was already pretty robust, said George Oslovich, the district’s assistant superintendent for middle and high school education. The district’s goal is to give students across the board college-level experience, be it AP or dual credit.

“It’s the mindset that students are going to need some sort of training [beyond high school] for many of the jobs that we have available,” Oslovich said. “If we can provide that level of rigor, it makes it easier for students. Maybe it’s just another year that they’ll need to move into that job.”

Crystal Lake Community High School District 155’s lineup of classes tends to fall into the general education realm, said Corey Tafoya, the assistant superintendent of educational services. But that’s mostly because of the way districts have been making their classes dual credit: Looking at what they already offer and whether the teacher is qualified and then seeing if enough students are interested.

“[Dual credit] makes high school more efficient,” Tafoya said. “Kids have been taking these courses for years and years. ... But they just didn’t know how prepared they are. Sometimes it opens their eyes to the fact that they are college ready.”

Teacher qualification is the biggest barrier to getting a dual credit course off the ground, Oslovich said, adding that aligning the curriculum and getting all the paperwork figured out isn’t as difficult.

College professors often have to have their master’s in the subject field to teach courses, but many secondary teachers pursue their master’s degrees in administration, something they need to move up the administrative ladder.

While tuition reimbursement programs are standard at school districts, McHenry County districts don’t offer any incentives to teachers to pursue one type of degree over the other.

District 200 will purposely hire someone with a content area master’s degree if they’re looking to create a dual credit program, Oslovich said. But that can be hard to find especially for math or science.

But districts also don’t want to discourage teachers from pursuing degrees in administration, Tafoya said, adding that districts need both future leaders and qualified teachers.