High-School Educators Await Details On Early College Proposal

CENTRAL OHIO -- Gov. Ted Strickland's plan to offer high-school students free tuition to spend their senior years at college is getting a wait-and-see reception from some high-school educators, and some worry about its impact on the students who choose not to take part.

"I'm not opposed to the idea. It's good news that we want to encourage students to go to college," John Foley, superintendent of Toledo public schools, said Thursday. "But not every kid as a senior is ready for college. I would hate to see a diminishing funding support for those kids."

Strickland's initiative, called "Seniors to Sophomores," would enable seniors at Ohio public high schools to take classes at two- or four-year Ohio public colleges instead of their high schools, picking up their high-school diplomas and a year of college credit at the same time. The seniors would have to meet the academic standards of the individual colleges.

Strickland said the goals are to challenge students who might feel disengaged from their high-school studies, help students who want to accelerate their college education, and save their families some money.

"We've got to wait and see what the proposal looks like," said Nick Hulea, principal at Waterloo High, which has an enrollment of about 460 in Portage County's rural Atwater and Randolph Townships in northeast Ohio. "We've got see how financially it's done."

Strickland said the tuition will be paid by combining the student's state subsidies from public school funding and state subsidies for college.

"Since we're collapsing two years of education into one, it should lead to lower costs," said spokesman Keith Dailey.

Carl Powell, past president of the Columbus Council of PTAs and parent of a recent high-school graduate, said one concern of students who want such credits is transportation to a college and staying involved with their friends and activities back at the high school.

"If you're a senior, you've gone to school with these kids for a lot of years," Powell said. "You know you will leave and go separate ways when you graduate. So it's a concern whether you leave early. That's a consideration - the social aspect of high school. That does have to be weighed."

Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, said the expectation is that most of the seniors will take the classes at a nearby college and live at home.

"This isn't about sending them away to college early," he said.

Strickland's goal is to begin rolling out the program in the fall, but he said it is unlikely it will initially be available to all eligible students around the state.

Susan Moeller's daughters Stephanie, 18, and Mackenzie, 15, both attend Northeastern High School near Springfield in western Ohio.

Moeller said her younger daughter may try to take advantage of the program when she is a senior. However, Moeller said she is heavily involved in sports and extracurricular activities - an important part of the high-school experience -- and wonders whether the family would be able to handle the extra load.

"I feel it's a great opportunity," said Moeller, 42, of South Charleston. "It certainly does help with the cost of college education."

There are already similar programs around the state.

Under the Post Secondary Enrollment Options program, for example, high-school freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors can take some college classes. The colleges are paid by funds earmarked for the high schools based on their per-pupil funding and how many college classes are taken. Last year, about 12,000 students participated in the program.

But some high schools and colleges have struggled to work out sharing costs and scheduling, sometimes keeping students from taking full advantage of the option. The students also don't take all of their classes at college and might not have a full year of college credit when they graduate high school.

At the Dayton Early College Academy, urban students enroll as high-school freshman, initially take high-school courses and then gradually begin taking college courses at the University of Dayton and Sinclair Community College.

Last year, 32 students graduated - seven of them with associate degrees - and all of them continued their college education.

Destin Grayson, 17, is in his fourth year at the school and expects to get his associate degree in the spring. He wants to major in pharmacy and has been accepted at six colleges.

Grayson took his first college class when he was 14 - an English course at Sinclair.

"I was intimidated," he recalled. "I didn't want to do my writing because I thought it might not be adequate. But I saw I was on the same level as these people."

Grayson believes going to college as a high-school senior is a good idea, as long as the students are prepared for it.

"Some people can't handle that pressure," he said. "It helped me establish my time-management skills and it helped my study skills. If you don't have the skills to do that, it might be a problem."

Leslie Moss, 17, a third-year student, encourages high-school students to try college early. She said it gives them a preview and teaches independence and time management.

And how was her first college class?

"It was heart-racing," she said.