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While our EC is a huge succes, it is very expensive, as we (GC taxpayers) pay for these students to take college classes at a private school. How many students apply for EC that are qualified and then refused? Do we have aneed? Would it be cheaper to have this at UNCG if it could be worked out. HP is a great college, but with the tight economic times that we are having is now the right time to expand?

Not good.

It would put our IB program in danger!

Dont do it!

Sorry, I meant to say the IB program at Central.

HP Parent,

You assume the kids that take the IB at Central could get into an Early College. I bet 90% of them would not!
The IB at Central is to keep the Emorywood folks kids there and keep them out of Private school. In reality its just a school within a school.

There are plenty of chances for smart kids to take lots of AP classes in our traditional High High Schools.

What this does is take these kids out making it harder to justify AP classes in the traditional schools and also taking out the really good AP teachers.

In short, I am against it!

Instead of weaking the traditional schools, maintain and improve the AP programs that are already there.

The IB program at Central is good example. I have heard that there have been some occasions where the kids have had no teacher for a particular subject and have to teach themselves.

HPU is an excellent university. If they are willing to accommodate an "Early College" type school then GCS would be crazy to pass up the opportunity.

The original Early college at Guilford is a tremendous school and has given a good name to our system. Why not duplicate its success at HPU. The thought of our students having the chance to be affiliated with Nedo and HPU is phenomenal. I am curious if this is a rumor or speculation though. I thought it was given "no" when Grier enquired about it several years ago.

It's sad that some will have a negative attitude about adding another wonderful option for our high schoolers.

Maybe there should be some discussions about consolidating IB programs if there are some that fear it would be taking students away from those programs. We have several IB schools in our system.

While it's a great opportunity for some, Early College takes the best students from the school system. This just helps the curve for the famous "gap". It's always about the numbers, not about educating our children.

"Early college takes the best students from the school system" (quote above)

What? The Early college programs are still a part of the school system. No students are "taken" from the system.

These programs offer our over-achieving students an opportunity for a very rigorous curriculum. It is no different than offering our handicapped or under-achieving students a curriculum tailored for their specific needs.

Enough of the selfish talk that another Early college-type program will "ruin IB programs" or "take students away". Our students are not property. They are not here to "fix" schools or make schools appear "better". Our students deserve opportunities. I am thankful that our system has many different options for our High Schoolers.

The Early college schools are one thing that GCS is doing RIGHT. I hope this partnership with HPU is successful and is up and running very soon.

When you take the best students out of the general population and teach them seperately you pay a price. The students left do not have as many role models that are performing at the highest levels. How are low performing students to know what excellence is if they don't see it on a daily basis. Our overall scores for High School students are lower today than they were 15 years ago. The establishment of magnet schools helped some children but did not raise the level of achievement in the county. No net progress was made.

The Early College program is limited to 200 students, currently about 1% of our High School population. Admission is terribly competitive and classroom demands are extreme for High School. Scores show over 85% AP pass rate and a significant percentage of classes are AP. Juniors and Seniors attend Guilford College with GCS counselor support and this is at taxpayer expense. Freshman and Sophomores (50 of each) attend rigorous academic classes and meet most graduation requirements in 2 years.

Letters of recommendations from 3 teachers, 1 essay and fantastic grades get you into a pool of consideration. Another timed essay is also given with no preparation as to subject or prompt is also given to applicants in controlled environment. The Early College at Guilford is a writing intensive atmosphere with math requirements assuming at least Algebra I completion as it is not offered there. Calculus is offered to sophomores. In many ways we could not offer this type of rigor at a local High School and to duplicate this at High Point University would be an outstanding accomplishment.

This program would be cruel for the over-expecting parent to inflict on a child, it requires not only total buy in of the student, but a commitment to lots of homework and sacrifice of a lot of “free time” to explore the world socially.

Now for the negative – I entered college at 16 and have personal experiences both good and bad. I spent a lot of time with a 12 year old genius also at the college as we had more in common. Being a 15 year old swimming and Water Polo prodigy looses all meaning as a 16 year old college student, my accomplishment there, I made the team. Two years make a big difference at that age both physically and emotionally. Such an environment should only be considered with much trepidation.

Call me neutral on expansion of this program and the cost is what keeps me on the line, some do need such a program and were our IB programs truly for advanced learning and a real math/science academy in our portfolio I might make me think otherwise.

In answer to question of apply vs accepted it was 1 in 3 accepted last year, this year my guess would be 1 in 4 or 5.

OK.

What do you get from the EC that you can get in HS?
In a traditional school here in GC my son has passed 7 AP's until his Junior year and he is taking another 5 this year. I fully expect him to pass all 5. For a total of 12. His best friend took a similar curriculum at our school last year and started at Virginia Tech as a Sophomore. His grades gave him enough credits to completely jump the Freshmen year. Isnt that wonderful?

There is a group of 20 or so kids that are doing the same thing at the school. If the EC is expanded and these 20 go off there then what happens to the other 80 or so kids that are taking AP classes throughout the school? They still need to have the opportunity as well.In some AP classes we have 20, in other classes we have ten to a class. If you take out 20 students logic tells me that it will weaken our HS AP program and what for?

I think that the EC is good and I support it but I seriously worry about the robustness of the AP/IB programs in our traditional schools if it is expanded.

Its a question of cost and as another poster stated above we must make sure the other AP/IB programs are robust.

I say no expansion!

Thats a great comment!

Anonymous Poster from above:

PLEASE tell us which high school - I want my child there!

I meant to say Early College takes the best students from the general school population, not "the school system". I stand corrected. Joe S makes an excellent point. I wholeheartedly agree that students are not here to "fix" the schools. That job should start with the parents of the students, each student as an individual and our school leaders. Students who do not have a desire to learn should be out of the classroom.

Garth made some great points too. Early College is not for every smart student. One has to be able to handle giving up a lot of social activities that he or she would have in a traditional high school setting. Then there is the age gap of the sexes once the "high school" student starts taking classes with college students.

I too support an Early College but do we need another one? How much will this cost us?

Above all, we need to strengthen our AP and IB curriculums. And do we need to duplicate IB programs at Smith, Grimsley and Page?

Wouldn't one IB program for High Point and one (that is working) in Greensboro be enough?

Does anyone know enough about the IB process to know how or why 9th and 10th graders are allowed special assignment to a school based on a program for 11th and 12th graders? There’s no “pre-IB” testing or anything like that for VSN programs in elementary or middle schools are there?

I like the question posed above.

If smart kids can take 12 AP's in traditional High Schools they they are getting what the need in my mind.

Just what does the Early College offer better than that?

I agree with many of the posts here and I dont agree with another Early College!

Let's definitely get rid of the one early college that we have. How unfair these kids are being sent across town when they should be back at their feeder school teaching thugs how to behave. Let's use these kids to our best advantage. To hell with what they need, let's use them.

Along this same thinking, Lincoln AL Academy should also be dissovolved. How insensitive that a system would take smart kids to the side and teach them! These kids need to be back in their neighborhood school to make the teacher's job easier. And like Joe said, where will the "good" role models come from from ?

GCS. We use and abuse you kids. Come on over and donate your child!

As I noted, AP is the norm at Early College, not considered advanced. I would prefer that we offered an adaptation of Early College at every “traditional” High school in the County, it would be possible and could be done much less expensively. Can it be done now? No, I do not believe we have the culture or commitment to pull it off at this time. I do believe that we might actually be heading in the right direction to be able to pull such a great achievement off in the future, say 2 years.

It would be a death knell to the current IB magnet program in my view, but if done properly would improve academics district wide. I am seeing a better atmosphere among staff in general, an improved desire for real academic improvement and this help being able to pull it off.

FYI I value and appreciate the feedback found here and have no malice to those critical of my views as it causes a true deliberation of the issues in my thought process. I appreciate the public’s tolerance of my presence on this blog and hope it doesn’t detract.

Garth

Garth,

WE LOVE YOU!!!!

Thank you!!!

It speaks volumes that you are the only consistent contributor to this blog (among the school board).

Garth two questions:

Please explain this comment:

"As I noted, AP is the norm at Early College, not considered advanced".

Now, What do you mean by this coment?

"I would prefer that we offered an adaptation of Early College at every “traditional” High school in the County".

I ask the second question because I do believe that there are plenty of Ap classes in our traditional schools. Look at the example above where some kid passed enough AP's to skip his freshmen year.
There are many more examples of this.

What else do you want from the traditiional schools. I dont think we need more opportunities there I think we need more quality!

Hey,
Another selfish view, You are being a little ridiculous.

The question is what cant an extremely smart kid get at a Traditional High School?

Lets compare my daughter who stayed at her local school and will finish with 11AP's and a ticket to Harvard to an Early College kid. Also, several of my daughters friends are going to Wake, and UNC. What would have become of them if they had gone to Early College? My guess not much different so why spend all that money?

Why?

Yes, I think there are traditional high schools that offer plenty of AP classes for their students but the same number and type of AP classes are not offered at every traditional high school. If your child is lucky enough to attend a high school that has a large number of these AP classes, that is great.

Unfortunately, some of our high schools do not have the ability to offer these kinds of classes to their students. For those schools, a high school like the Early College at Guilford is a wonderful opportunity for them.

I think the EC at G offers more than just rigorous classes. For many of these kids, it is a chance for them to thrive in a environment with peers like themselves. I have talked to parents who told me their kids did not feel like they fit in at a traditional high school but love it at the EC at G.

For whatever reason kids apply to the EC at G, I think it is great that we have this school for them and would support another one at HPU.

You can take the same AP courses at HS too!

Nobody can explain what is the great advantage is of going to Early College?

For a smart kid I maintain the end result is the same.

This direction will eliminate AP courses from our local High Schools.

What if you child is a late developer?

What happens is that he/she is screwed@!
Too late to go to EC in the junior year.

It will mean a dumbing down of the local High Schools!

These colleges are the dumbing down of our High Schools.

I am totally against it! It will mean.

For Traditional HS and their children it will mean:

Less top teachers.
No room for late developers.
Reduction in the number of challenging courses

Its just another gimmick for Guilford County public relations.

There is no reason that a advanced children cannot be challenged in the traditional High schools!

The problem with all of this is the county’s push to enroll more kids in AP courses. A vast majority of the kids in AP courses aren’t prepared to take what should be a true Advanced Placement course. Look at the statistics presented in Mo’s new Strategic Plan:

"I.K The percentage of students taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses will increase by 6 percentage points, and the overall passing rate will increase by 6 percentage points. (70 percent take AP courses and 44 percent pass AP exams as of the 2007-08 school year.)"

Our goals themselves tell you our kids aren’t prepared. We want to increase our passing rate from 44%-50%? 50%? Seriously??

It would be interesting to know what the passing rate is at just the EC. I would presume it to be much higher than 44% or even 50%.

I was a victim of this same situation when I was in high school in the late 90's (not GCS). We were only offered a small number of AP courses and about half the students in those courses had no business being in there. What happened was that the teachers had to worry about maintaining passing grades in their classes and appeasing parents and ended up dumbing down the course and not preparing us for the exam.

I turned out ok, went to Duke University and graduated with a degree in History with a Religion minor. But, with zero AP credits which meant I had to attend Duke an extra summer to graduate (a normal course load with 8 semesters left you 2 courses short of the graduation requirements)

The reasoning behind AP courses is that they should replace a college course. Unfortunately, a high school teacher, in a regular high school setting isn’t afforded the same leeway as a college professor. A college doesn’t care if you pass a class or not. They don’t have to provide “free and equal” education to anyone.

This isn’t just an AP problem. How exactly are CP courses “College Prep” and Honors “Honors” when CP won’t even get you into most colleges? Take the same concept and pushes by the county to 8th grade Algebra 1. I know--old regime, but still the same thought process. How many of our kids in 8th grade pass Algebra 1?

About 40%.

Sorry for the novel.

In traditional High Schools Freshman and Sophomores do not normally take AP courses, it is the norm at Early College. Some honors classes are offered at EC, but AP is strongly encouraged and for most part expected, this is a stark contrast to our traditional High School program. Junior and Senior classes are in the college classroom.

I am in the unenviable position of biting my tongue with the next comments, but alas some AP and IB offerings in the county are terribly weak and the pass rates reflect this. We have virtually forced some students into AP environment causing distractions and frustration where it was not needed. Yes, we do have a couple of schools that are performing at the national average or even a little better with quality AP offerings. Instead of this being the exception it should be our goal to make it the rule.

The Early College takes about 4 kids from each High School (no allocation) for each grade, if you want to make the argument that this takes something significant away from these schools you are missing much of the picture. Many of these kids are so far advanced for their age in so many ways that in a real way they can be a detriment to their peer group and fitting in is often very difficult and frustrating for them.

Having said all the above, please do not take my points as other than discussion, I am not sold on Early College in its current format but I do see both sides and sit with a scale in one hand and book in the other pondering the solution if any exists. With appreciation, Garth