In evolving attempts to smooth the path to college, the number of students enrolled in college classes concurrent with their high school studies is growing.
But the students taking advantage of free college classes are usually already on track to succeed.
“My English class was a lot of work, but I had already taken AP English and IB classes before these college classes, so it’s been pretty easy,” said Vonia Adams, a concurrent-enrollment student from Hinkley High School in Aurora.
Concurrent-enrollment programs authorized by state law allow high schoolers to take college classes, paid for by their home districts. Students first take the Accuplacer test or the ACT and must test at a college level, unless they are in 12th grade.
Statewide, the number of students in concurrent enrollment has grown to 6,473 in fall of 2010 from 1,750 five years before.
Denver Public Schools recorded 1,572 students taking college classes in the fall of 2010, up from 576 in 2008. More than half of concurrent-enrollment students are still juniors and seniors.
While the majority of concurrently enrolled students attend community colleges, students also can enroll at some four-year colleges. Community College of Aurora has the highest numbers of concurrent-enrollment students, with nearly 2,000 this year.
Adams, a senior at Hinkley, is taking four college classes this semester at the Community College of Aurora.
“I would have still gone to college, but this way I saved a ton of money,” Adams said.
Another concurrent-enrollment program, ASCENT, allows students to stay in high school for a fifth year so they can graduate with a diploma and an associate’s degree.
The idea of the programs is to create more opportunities for students to go to college.
“There’s students who think college is not even in the realm of possibility,” said Linda Bowman, president at the Community College of Aurora, who helped draft concurrent-enrollment legislation.
“When you have no clue about what college you can go to or what you want to study, this is a great opportunity because I would have only been able to pay for a few classes,” said Sally Varela, an ASCENT student from Aurora Central High School.
Varela became a certified nursing assistant and earned a business certificate using the concurrent-enrollment programs while in high school.
Some students say the program has better prepared them for college.
“College classes are a little bit harder, but the atmosphere is what is so different,” said Jorge Carmona, a student at Southwest Early College in Denver who has been taking college classes since 10th grade. “It helps me get a feel for the atmosphere, and it makes it easier to learn to write a college paper, which is different than a high school essay.”
Among Colorado high school students entering in-state colleges and universities in fall of 2010, 28.6 percent needed remedial classes, according to a state education-department report. Concurrent programs were not designed to take over the job of preparing high school graduates for college, though that may be a secondary outcome.
“When we are doing Accuplacer earlier, we can identify early now whether they are on track to be post-secondary ready, so there can be interventions instead of finding out when they enter college,” Bowman said. “Of all the things we can do, this is the quickest.”
Next year, the state expects about 750 students will enroll in the ASCENT program, at an estimated cost of $4 million.
The Concurrent Enrollment Advisory Board is worried about funding, and so may remove students from the program if they qualify for Pell grants. This would make room for students who have no other way to pay for college.
