College Credit Plus Puts Talawanda High School In GPA Crisis

BY RACHEL TRACY
Miami University journalism student

A state program aimed to get students though college in four years and to save them money has created headaches at Talawanda High School, said Vice President of Talawanda Board of Education Michael Crowder

College Credit Plus

A program pushed for by Ohio Gov. John Kasich to lower college tuition costs for future students, College Credit Plus in early 2014 allows Ohio students to take college courses as early as seventh grade, changing the way Talawanda High School grades its students.

One semester of a CCP course counts toward a full year of a high school class. In addition, middle school students can begin working on their GPA before even entering high school.

“What's going to end up happening is you're going to have students at the end of their four years of high school, having a complete mixed bag of who took what type of courses,” said Crowder about students taking CCP, AP and honors courses. “The state law is that you cannot hold it against a student who took a CCP course rather than a high school course when you go and calculate GPAs and awards, salutatorian and valedictorian.”

Effect on Students

Because GPAs now take CCP courses into account, there are multiple students at the end of their senior year who are so close to taking the title of valedictorian and salutatorian, that the difference is in the thousandths of points. The difference is critical to students and their families since multiple universities in Ohio award full-ride tuition to the valedictorian or salutatorian.

Since students can now begin working on their GPAs earlier than the start of high school, CCP courses are likely to increase or significantly drop their grade averages at the end of high school. If, in fact, a student receives an A in a CCP course, he/she will receive high school credit multiplied by the quality points in which the CCP is worth.

Director of Teaching and Learning for Talawanda School District Joan Stidham said public high schools are forced to accept the terms of CCP courses laid out in the legislation. “And the legislation was written for college credit plus to start in seventh grade.”

Another major impact from the CCP program is the high school’s lack of control over the quality of the college courses, leaving some students taking much easier or much harder courses compared to their peers.

Possible Solutions

Although still in the early stages of discussing possible solutions, school board members and school counselors have discussed the idea of changing to the Latin system of Magna Cum Laude and Summa Cum Laude. This would create a bigger group of top performing students instead of selecting only two.

"Nothing has been decided, we're in exploratory mode right now. I don’t know that any changes will come but it's certainly worth something to look at,” said Crowder. “CCP has changed so many things at schools and we really don’t know what all the implications are and so this is just one part that we have to look at."

If changes are made, they may not be implemented for another six years since current seventh graders can participate in CCP.

Photo: Ohio created College Credit Plus (CCP) in 2014. -- Photo contributed by www.ohiohighered.org.