Post Secondary Enrollment and the Governor's Plan for HS Seniors

Eric Fingerhut made some statements in the DDN today that I disagree with strongly. He's either uninformed, making stuff up, or both.

Interviewed by Stephanie Gottsclich, Fingerhut said that high schools discourage partipation in post secondary enrollment option, or PSEO. I would argue that schools don't discourage it at all.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, PSEO allows a high school student to leave campus and visit a college campus for coursework that earns college credit and possibly fulfills high school credit at the same time. It would seem to be a model for the dual enrollment programs the governor promoted in his state of the state program.

As Gottschlich points out, PSEO already allows students who choose to go from "senior to sophomore". So when he mentioned this, many educators were scratching their heads, thinking, "we already do this."

Fingerhut argued in the DDN piece that the cost of the program causes schools to downplay it.

While participation in PSEO has steadily increased to more than 12,000 students in fall 2007, the number accounts for only 2 percent of all Ohio high school students, according to a March report from the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, a Cincinnati-based nonpartisan education policy research group.

The report, "The Promise of Dual Enrollment: Assessing Ohio's Early College Access Policy," found that participation rates were not equal throughout Ohio and that high schools lose money for every PSEO course taken by their students.

In 2004-05, the state redirected about $17.8 million in state funds from Ohio schools to pay for PSEO courses.

That causes high schools to downplay the program, said Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, whom Strickland charged with carrying out his plan. "Some are working around it altogether and using different programs," he said.

Problem: I don't buy it. Just not true. Schools do a lot of things to counsel students into appropriate options. As a high school teacher, and as a community college instructor who's had PSEO students in class, I know that Fingerhut is wrong about this.

There are lots of reasons students might not take PSEO. Social reasons. Lack of transportation. Or the fact that their high school offers excellent AP programs and arts programs during their senior year.

There is a pilot program that would certify hs courses for college credit by having senior year courses (say, fourth year Spanish) align with courses taught at a local college like UC or OSU. The classroom teacher becomes an adjunct faculty member teaching a college course within the HS walls. Maybe that's what Strickland was talking about. If so, I'm all for it. But it will take a great deal of administrative support.

But it's disappointing to have the governor propose something so poorly defined and have the chancellor speak about it with such ignorance.