Dual credit or enrollment is very common across the many high schools of America. An easy way to get guaranteed college credit to a specific college, it is very helpful in allowing students to take the next step and get college level experience.

College Credit Plus, otherwise known as CCP, is a program created by Ohio’s Department of Education that is a type of dual enrollment where the state pays for the classes taken. This creates a much bigger opportunity for students in their hopes of gaining college credit early as these classes come at no cost to the family unlike the expensive option of dual credit. Another benefit of CCP is from the Ohio Transfer 36, a program that ensures the transfer of listed general education requirements to any Ohio college.

However, one issue that could be spotted with CCP is the lack of range. Just as dual enrollment, not every college across the nation will accept college credit from the teaching of another college, particularly larger colleges receiving credits from smaller ones. This is the benefit of AP, universal credits that are able to be spread around to every school in the nation.

This calls for an analysis of Ohio’s College Credit Plus program, specifically at Elder High School, looking at its recent implementation of many CCP classes in the main curriculum, the difficulties that came with this sudden inclusion, and the benefits and pitfalls that some have witnessed while both teaching and being taught CCP.

Introducing CCP at Elder

Elder students will start their course requests for the next school year around the start of the second semester after Christmas Break. Around this time last year, students began to see the course request sheets and were then brought to meetings to look at and learn about this new type of class that Elder had not used in its main curriculum in its 100-year history.

One issue that immediately came up in the process of introducing CCP according to Dean of Academics Dr. Patrick Tucker, was the amount of paperwork that needed to be complete by parents and their children being “substantially more than in the past.”

Even with this struggle, Dr. Tucker makes sure to note that “it is still the same paperwork that every private school student in the state would complete. I would like to think if parents from all over the state can do it, we can figure it out also.”

Although it was not very difficult to get CCP into the curriculum at Elder, the presentation of it to students, at least according to Grady Miles who is currently taking CCP Government and CCP English 4, was lacking.

“I feel like they introduced it to us in that presentation, and that was the only thing, and then we made our schedules. I wish I had more information and just knew more about it.”

Overall, this was the majority of the introduction to the students. Many more details would be learned later, but the large points needed before starting to take the classes were made in a single presentation and then the classes were shoved in front of the students.

Since CCP has been a learning experience in its first year, there is not much value at looking back, so now one must analyze what has worked and what has not for CCP so far at Elder.

Benefits

Many of the benefits of CCP come through the monetary value given. As stated previously, the state of Ohio will pay for all approved credit hours that had the credits sent out to the college.

Dr. Tucker, Grady Miles, and Elder student counselor Dr. Kelly Kinross all agree that this is a very valuable investment.

Dr. Kinross states, “I mean, that’s the end goal is that students are able to start college a little bit early with less debt later on while they are in college getting the college credit as a high school student, so I think that’s the end goal no matter which way they go.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Tucker gives reason through statistics by saying, “The cost of the college credit through the CCP program is much lower than our previous dual credit programs. In some cases, students are receiving college credit completely funded by the state. Even if it isn’t funded by the state, the cost for college credit through Cincinnati State is $41 per hour compared to $65 per hour through Mount St. Joseph University or Thomas More University.”

Another obvious benefit of CCP that does not need much mention is the simple fact of its nature as a college class. As Forbes put it in “The Value of College Courses In High School is Is Signaling, Not Credit“, engaging in college classes as a student still in high school “demonstrates [the student’s] ability to perform at the college level. The student shows they can handle the rigors of university coursework and navigate the expectations that come with it, often alongside or even in competition with actual college students.”

Overall, many of the benefits of CCP also must come from the type of student one is. Dr. Kinross points this out when speaking on how some students may see the AP test as a bigger end goal that could provide more encouragement than a college class, but, overall, “It’s really up to each student what their objective is.”

Pitfalls

In order to see some of the areas where CCP can be less effective, it is necessary to go into the classroom with Mr. Ben Woeste and his many CCP business classes to see some of the parts about the in-classroom experience that create the pitfalls.

One of the biggest issues that Woeste has seen comes from the  focus on online learning.

“I’ve only been teaching for five years but I like to think I’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t work in an Elder business classroom after having tried a bunch of different things.  After looking at what was expected in my classes for our students to get credit, I knew it was unlikely to lead to much learning if they were anything like the majority of the Elder students I’ve taught in the past—and like myself when I went to school here.  ”

Now, this is not to attack any specific college and its CCP requirements for teachers. After all, CCP is offered to many high schools at the same time, so there is little choice but to have a standardized way to teach and grade the class at all of them.

The hurdle with this, however, is to take these instructions and be able to use them effectively in a class that has been being taught mostly the same way up to this point. “Being an analytical and reflective person by nature, I wanted to compare the learning done in the first quarter of this school year, after following the CCP curriculum exactly, to the learning done in last year’s class which allowed for far less online learning. To accomplish this, as I do each year, I gave a quarter test to gauge learning after the first quarter concluded. The results, unfortunately proved my assumptions about the online curriculum and the learning done to be correct (see the graphs below).”

Woeste later cites his adhering exactly to the curriculum prescribed as being more an issue with his own mental block and unwillingness to veer from the given curriculum and expectations until he had proven (to himself and his students) the online learning was not leading to learning in the way it should .

“When [the work is] all online, kids are very resourceful, and anybody who thinks they can’t go out and find the answer for most classes is ignoring the reality. In part, I allowed the first quarter in my accounting classes to be done the way I did because we have plenty of time to correct it and I saw an opportunity to show them one of the major pitfalls many college business courses fall prey to.

Many college business courses they will take in a year or two are exactly like the way I taught the first quarter. I wanted to show them that if they do not take ownership of their learning, by at least using the internet and AI as a tutor to help them solve problems rather than simply providing the answer, they will learn very little in many of their college courses even if their grade in their courses indicate otherwise.”

This is an issue that can be cited through personal experience in a CCP Calculus 1 class. There will be many points where I am doing my work and, when faced with a roadblock in the homework, I can go out online and simply find AI to explain the problem for me and get me to the answer that way.

This is a very large issue that Woeste sees: AI misuse.

“The problem with the online learning platforms is that finding the answer [and the use of AI] is just too easy. There’s no friction whatsoever to finding the correct answer. Like getting bigger, or faster, or stronger, learning doesn’t happen without effort.”

AI can be extremely harmful to schoolwork in every area, so harmful that students will now be continually looking for sites to check for the AI in their work such as GPTZero to put in more than enough effort to not do their work the correct way.

After looking at these points, what would the verdict be on CCP? One more showing from Mr. Woeste shows how it may not be the issue of CCP but the issue of teaching difficulties in an online environment and a lack of drive to learn.

First, Woeste has been enacting a “complete 180” in his classroom to get the focus back on learning and away from the points chasing of an online course. He is now focusing more on real-world applications and discussions with his students and in-class work where he has the ability to look over their shoulders . When he does give at home assignments he is attempting to increase the difficulty to try to force better use of AI tools such as by having the students use AI teach them how to do a problem so they can then turn around and teach the rest of the class.

He does remark that this may be much more difficult to grade, and there also may be students who are not very well versed in discussion; however, he believes that this is an effective gauge to see if his students are “actually learning the material  and can have a conversation about it.”

Overall, it seems that the processes of CCP and the teaching may be slightly difficult in its first year at Elder High School.

However, the much more valuable stance to look at this class type from is its very low to no cost and its effectiveness is preparing students for college level classes, so CCP seems as if it may be a mainstay at Elder, especially from the perspective of Dr. Tucker, who says that the school will most likely have two or three new CCP offerings for the 26-27 school year.