Nearly 40 students at the Center for Arts & Technology (CAT) have been accepted to Delaware County Community College (DCCC) and will begin taking classes this fall, even though the students are still one to two years away from graduating high school. Thanks to a push by the school’s administration to create rigorous career and technical programs, eligible students are earning college credit at DCCC for their career and technical studies at the Center for Arts & Technology.
“We started offering the dual-enrollment option in 2005, when we opened the Applied Electronics Academy at both of our campuses,” said Brenda Cohen, the school’s post-secondary coordinator. “Now we have three programs in total for which students are dual-enrolled: the AET program as well as computer information systems and the business academy. Plus, four more programs are in the final stages of the approval process: automotive service technology, carpentry and cabinetmaking, electrical occupations, and HVAC and refrigeration technology.”
According to Cohen, her goal is for all of the school’s career and technical programs to offer a dual-enrollment option. With 24 programs in total, she’s over a quarter of the way there.
As it stands now, every program in the school has an agreement with an area college to allow students to apply for advanced placement credit.
According to Cohen, the difference is that through dual-enrollment programs, students earn transcript credit that they can take with them to any college or university since they are matriculated students at DCCC. Advancement placement credit, on the other hand, requires students to apply or to pass an exam to receive college credit, and then the credit is only good for that institution. Both dual-enrollment and advanced placement credit are good but dual-enrollment is better. It’s also harder to get.
“In affect, DCCC is saying this is our class and that’s why a student is getting credit for it. Students have to apply to and be accepted by the college just as if they were incoming freshmen. In addition, our (CAT) instructors have to be approved by DCCC just as if DCCC were hiring them, and our curriculum has to be approved as if it were a college course. It’s a much more rigorous process than a college allowing students to sit for an exam to earn credit, and that was a difficult process in and of itself,” said Cohen.
The extra work is worth it, according to Cohen: “It’s a wonderful opportunity for our students. They can earn up to 16 college credits. The neat thing is they don’t have to pay for them since it is part of their high school program.
To participate in the dual-enrollment program option, students must meet CAT admission requirements, plus:
- Have a minimum high school grade point average of 3.0; and
- Score in advanced or proficient level on the PSSA mathematics and reading assessments, or score above the 67th percentile in the general learning aptitude section of the CareerScope Assessment.
