Stephanie Irwin Gottschlich writes about higher education.Home > Blogs > On Campus > Archives > 2008 > February > 20 > Entry
What’s up with PSEO now that they need to fix it?
Some readers had some questions about my post on Strickland’s “Seniors to Sophomores” program.
Mary and Ohdave, I have some answers for you on PSEO. First, I wrote a follow-up story on the current PSEO system in the Dayton Daily News and you can read a summary here and more detailed story here.
For answers to questions about the current PSEO program differs from Strickland’s proposal, and how it works (or doesn’t), keep reading.
Strickland’s proposal differs from current PSEO program in that it guarantees that if a student wants to spend the entire senior year on a college campus, they can. For some reason the system now doesn’t easily allow that. I’m sure it has something to do with articulation of high school to college courses, and vice versa. It’s a lot of work right now for hs guidance counselors and college officials to do a one-to-one match. Otherwise, no, it’s not much different. I think Strickland is trying to get colleges and high schools to work out kinks in PSEO to make it easy for students to participate.
Also the funding system will be different so that high schools don’t lose a portion of state funding to colleges when a student earns the high school credit through a college instead of the secondary classroom.
In current PSEO system, the state funding that a high school receives for a student follows the student - so if a student is taking a college course, a portion of the state funding ordinarily given to the high school goes to the college to pay for the course. High schools are not fond of this funding system, and I’m told that’s why they don’t promote it (PSEO). What the end up doing, however, is setting dual enrollment arrangements with colleges outside of PSEO to avoid the state funding snafus altogether. So there are students earning college credit, it’s just not paid for under the PSEO system.
About the difference between dual enrollment and PSEO: Dual enrollment is a general term for students earning college and high school credit simultaneously. In Ohio it’s used most often to describe the program outside of the PSEO system. So yes it’s different term, I suppose.
The PSEO system, in which students can earn both high school and college credit, is better described as a policy and the state’s funding mechanism for paying for it. Participation in PSEO does not accurately reflect the number of students earning college and high school credit. There are tons more. I’ll be doing a story soon on who those students and where they earn credit and how.
About what kinds of credit students are earning: Most are taking arts and humanities courses (English) and science courses. There is evidence (see my story) that of course these kid are ready for college-level reading, writing and math simply because they spent time in those courses already. But students are also earning college credit through AP testing. Centerville High School, for example, has many AP courses beyond the traditional math/english/history (psychology, business, it’s stunning). There’s plenty of opportunity there for earning college credit.
My sense is that academically qualified students are cobbling together PSEO, dual enrollment and AP courses. And Ohdave, you’re right - high schools want to be sure that college-level intro courses are as rigorous or more rigorous than their high school equivalents. Fingerhut and Strickland are working on that too.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Higher education politics, University System of Ohio
Comments
By Mary
February 21, 2008 10:06 AM | Link to this
Thanks for the update, Stephanie. Two issues still concern me. As a taxpayer, why shouldn’t schools loose some state money if the students go fulltime to the colleges? What are the schools going to do with the money? Also, as a parent whose child needed and wanted alternatives, I do not excuse schools for downplaying the program and its opportunities to protect their funds. It costs taxpayers less money to educate the student in the college classes than the high school classes, and schools have been ineffective in offering academic opportunities, particularly for gifted students. This program also is not really focused on gifted students, either, but parents have to try to patch an appropriate education program together for their child and should not have had to fight the school districts to do so.By Oldprof
February 21, 2008 4:23 PM | Link to this
Stephanie, I cannot speak for every last college-level course, but the suggestion that they are frequently less rigorous than high school courses is laughable! We receive students out of high school who cannot write sentences with proper subject-verb agreement, who think Beethoven is still alive, who think the Sun orbits the Earth, and who can’t solve a simple binomial equation. I can attest that my colleagues and I do NOT assign a final grade of A for that level of knowledge.