Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/649572
Christie Diep was shocked that very few people in her college district could provide any details about the program, including information on how her own department's curriculum was approved for use at the high school. "is seemed like a violation of our con- tract. High school teachers were teaching all the classes, they were using our curric- ulum, and the students were supposedly earning credits from our college. How is it that we were just giving away our curricu- lum?" she asks. Diep was able to get her local chapter (Unit ed Faculty Nor th O ran ge County Community College D i s t r i c t ) a n d t h e A c a d e m i c S e n a t e to lo o k into it an d eventually stop the program . That was back in 2012, but the damage was done. As a result, D iep says, "e term 'mid- dle college' has a very special connotation on our campus, as it represents sneaky deals, lack of shared governance, contract violations, board policy violations, and Ed Code violations." H I G H S C H O O L S T U D E N T S ' ACC E S S , R E A D I N E S S Other dual enrollment programs have had unintended consequences for faculty and students alike. A few years ago at Merced College, for example, high school students were able to forgo college fees because they were taking their courses through contract education, in which the college contracts with public or private entities to provide courses. is occurred at the same time tuition was going up for regular students and courses were being canceled or dropped, according to CCA Board member Keith Law, a Merced College philosophy professor. " H i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s r e c e i v e d privileged access to our courses, while our students were getting these same courses cut on our campus," Law says. W h eth er classes take place on high school campuses or at the community college itself, college instructors have also had concerns about what happens to the curriculum when high school students are in the class. ey say that many high school students are coming to their campuses unprepared for college courses. "We have to be clear that the content is the content and that there is no dumbing down of the curriculum," says Dianna Chi- abotti, president of the Napa Valley College Faculty Association. Other issues that have emerged over the years are student safety, dealing with par- ents, and concerns over having students as young as 14 in class with 27-year-olds. "I had a parent who dropped her kid off for my class. e student skipped out, the parent came back and yelled at me, and I couldn't do anything about it because of FERPA [the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act]," says Judith Kreft, a part-time physical education teacher at Sierra College. "I'm worried that we risk losing our jobs." It's not only community college faculty who have concerns about the programs. A d v a n c e d P l a c e m e n t p r o g r a m s a t Truckee High School were decimated by an exodus of students who opted to take English 1A at nearby Sierra College for the same number of credits as the more rigor- ous AP English course at their high school, according to Patrick Mooney, an English instructor and mem- b e r o f t h e Ta h o e Truckee Education Association. Mooney n o t e s t h a t i n p a r t b e c a u s e s o m a n y high school students opted for community college classes, there were teacher layoffs at his school. "We've had times when our enrollment went from 28 students to five in AP English, and social studies classes had the same problem. It came up as a union issue sev- eral years ago. Attendance was dropping, and we lost several English teachers in one year," he says. Mooney supports students being able Keith Law Things to know about the College and Career Access Pathways Act AB 288 by Assembly Member Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) authorizes community college districts to form partnership agreements with local school districts to expand access to concurrent enrollment opportunities for high school students. The bill was signed into law in October. A primary goal of AB 288 is to provide high school students who are not ready for college exposure to college work and the college environment. The program is intended to promote more career pathways to fill local labor market needs. The act also calls for school and college districts to reach these agreements at regularly scheduled public meetings, monitor student progress, and gather data to allow for better analyses of the programs. The partnerships must comply with local collective bargaining agreements and guarantee that no community college instructor or qualified high school teacher has been displaced or terminated as a result of the partnership. Christie Diep 42 cta.org