BY BRANDON SLOANE
In Etowah High School in Cherokee County, Georgia, the academic race to be the valedictorian was extremely competitive and even more controversial. Recently, senior Kelly McCahill surpassed senior Sydney Perlotto for the valedictorian position. The reason for the controversy is that while Perlotto spent all of her time taking classes at Etowah High School, McCahill had never actually set foot on the campus. How can a person who didn’t attend a school become its top-rated student? The answer is that McCahill was involved in the dual enrollment program and had been taking classes off site at a nearby college. A similar type of dual enrollment controversy is present at Cooper City High School. Many of CCHS’s students are using the dual enrollment system in order to take college-level courses to pad their GPA’s. While dual enrolling may seem like an effective way for students to improve their class ranking, in reality, it is an opportunistic system that only favors some students and undermines the learning that takes place within actual high school classes.
One flawed facet of dual enrolling is the fact that students can take a simple class that doesn’t require much effort and get the same credit as a rigorous Advanced Placement level class. Courses such as P.E., Introduction to Business, and Introduction to Public Speaking are common examples of classes that high school students take when dual enrolling. For the most, part these classes don’t require the higher level learning that one would expect of a college level class.
For example, in the Public Speaking course, the class is only three hours a session, once a week, for six weeks. The only assignments are to write two 4-minute speeches and answer an occasional blog post. Quite a significant drop-off from the workload given by most AP classes offered at CCHS. So how can our education system justify giving a student who barely does any work in a dual enrollment course the same credit as a student who worked rigorously in an AP class?
Dual enrollment students also have an unfair advantage because some students cannot afford to take these classes. As you may know, college is extremely expensive. So when students take these college level courses, they also take on some of the financial responsibilities that accompany them. For example, most classes require students to buy textbooks, which are anything but cheap. Prices of these books can range anywhere from $40 to over $100. Add in the price of the extra materials required for class such as paper, pencils, flash drives, and you have quite a bill on your hands, and in today’s economy, not everyone can manage to pay.
Finally, some students simply do not have the means to get to the campus. The Central Broward College campus is around a 15 minute drive from CCHS and is hardly walking or biking distance for most students. Not to mention that BC’s Southern and Northern campuses are even farther away than that. If students do not have the transportation to travel to the campus, then they are out of luck and won’t be able to dual enroll. Basically, the ability for a student to boost his GPA by dual enrolling is almost completely dependent on whether or not he/she has access to a car.
Dual enrolling is by no means a bad idea. It gives students the opportunity to take college classes and receive college credit while still in high school. It is a great experience that anyone with the right circumstances should take advantage of. The only problem is, it is not an equal opportunity system. Until dual enrolling gives each and every student an equal and fair chance to take the classes, it should by no means be counted towards your high school GPA or factored in to your class ranking.
