Warnings Regarding Dual Credit and AP Courses

Students who chose to partake in Dual Credit and Advanced Placement courses do so based on recommendations from ignorant, external, influential individuals. Parents, being one of these groups of individuals, often believe that giving their children more challenging work will only benefit them and open opportunities because it is assumed their student’s success, health, happiness, and well-being will be determined by academic standing. Surface-level thinking such as this fosters negligent behavior by the parent and is dangerous to the student’s emotional and mental well-being. They believe that giving them more challenging work will only provide benefits and opportunities for them. After all, William Darity in his article Increasing Opportunity to learn via access to rigorous courses says that parents “pushed” students to take advanced courses because “they would benefit them in some way or another.”They fail to consider that students’ overall well-being is much more important than their academic pursuits. 

Administration encourages students to take dual credit and AP courses because they are ignorant of potential risks. As George Wachowiak in his article “ Dual Enrollment experiences: Perceptions and readiness for post-secondary education“, says that students are pushed to participate in these programs because of “decisions based on policymaker belief rather than program efficacy.” Like the parents, administration such as teachers and advisors are blind to the overall ineffectiveness of these programs and the damage they can cause. 

Another reason administration encourages students to take dual credit and AP courses is because they gain an incentive. Predictors Of Success Among High School Students in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate by Shannon Suldo states that ” many states provide financial incentives for schools and districts based on AP or IB student enrollment.” Selfishly, the school pressures students to join AP and dual credit courses to gain this bonus. Schools also enjoy statistical bragging rights from high numbers of AP and DE enrollments. They publicize these numbers to promote enrollment. Administration pressures students into thinking they need to take these courses so that they can gain these benefits. 

Because high-achieving students are presumed to be self-sufficient, they receive little if any support for the demanding workload of their advanced courses. Depression, anxiety, and even worse mental health problems are inevitable for students who aren’t taught techniques to manage their time, deal with stress, or tackle harder work. Academically, they could be thriving, but they could be immensely suffering in other areas of their life. 

Teachers in both programs are unreliable resources because they are not required to take any additional training to teach advanced education. As a dual enrollment student you have two sets of teachers, highschool teachers and college professors. It can be detrimental for a highschool student to have a professor while still in highschool because they will be taught without accountability for their disadvantages. Some issues a highschool student could have can include travel distance and time, being overwork by  highschool work and extracurriculars, mental capacity differences, and even maturity differences between highschool and college students. Not to mention that a highschool student is a senior while partaking in this program, which is likely, they are dealing with the multiple stresses of choosing colleges and future careers. College professors are not given any additional resources on how to teach high school students advanced material. There are way too many differences between teaching highschool versus  college students which are not recognized in these programs. 

In regards to AP teachers there are many problems that reside in normal highschool teachers teaching advanced classes. For instance, many AP teachers also teach regular curriculum classes in addition to their AP responsibilities. This leaves them unavailable to plan thorough lessons, talk after class, or for any additional support. These same teachers might also have additional jobs and responsibilities which further prevents time for needed assistance. Teachers of these programs do not need to receive any additional training or qualifications to teach these students. As a result of this they may find it difficult to understand and teach the content. Teachers might also run into problems teaching students dealing with increased stress and mental health concerns. In order for these programs to advance  the well-being of the student teachers would need to have particular characteristics as well as additional training to teach advanced students and offer them aid with their array of concerns.

Time pressures threaten these students with burnout while depriving them of any chance of a social life, a part-time job, or extracurriculars. Once enrolled in Dual Enrollment there are no time opportunities or extracurriculars, sports, any after-school events, or a job because college classes have to be taken during and after school. The student typically leaves after 4,5 or 6 periods of high school and then goes to college. At this point, there is no time to be able to do anything after at the student’s high school or outside the school. Students who are in AP have an abundant amount of homework and studying therefore their time at home with family and friends are interrupted. Students who are in either program struggle with getting an appropriate amount of sleep, eating proper meals, finding personal time for themselves, and exploring other interests or hobbies independently. Dual Enrollment and AP are dangerous for students because it provides an extreme time burden. 

Colleges often deny these overachieving students college credit for the courses they worked so hard to pass. As stated in the article ” Whither Advanced Placement “ by a Yale affiliate William Lichten, ” A majority of tests taken do not qualify.” Advanced Placement students do not qualify for college credit for the course if they don’t receive a high enough score on the final test. It is globally proclaimed that these tests are extremely difficult. Along with the student stressing about work during the year, they have to stress about taking an extremely hard test at the end of the year that determines if their hard work paid off. Dual Credit works differently, the student may pass the final test but there is a possibility of not receiving college credit. This is the case because sometimes certain courses at one institution aren’t available at another therefore they can’t provide college credit. 

In the worst cases, these classes kill gifted students.As proclaimed in a study referenced in the article ” Suicide and the Gifted Adolescent” by Marnell Hayes ” Of the eight, five were reported as gifted underachievers, two were in advanced placement classes, and two were in programs formally designated as gifted programs.” Although two students is a low number, no student should ever have to experience such a level of dissatisfaction in their life as a result of their school work. This statistic not only speaks to the idea that Advanced Placement is hard but also recognizes how struggling students can go unnoticed. No student at all should want to commit suicide but because of the mental and physical difficulty of Advanced Placement courses students want to hurt themselves.

References

Darity, W., Castellino, D., Tyson, K., Cobb, C., & McMillen, B. (2001, April 30). Increasing opportunity to learn via access to rigorous courses and programs: One strategy for closing the achievement gap for at-risk and ethnic minority students. ERIC. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED459303 

Hayes, M. L., & Sloat, R. S. (1990). Suicide and the Gifted Adolescent. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 13(3), 229–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/016235329001300304

Lichten, W. (2000). Whither Advanced Placement?. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8, 29. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v8n29.2000More Citation Formats 

Suldo, S. M., Shaunessy-Dedrick, E., Ferron, J., & Dedrick, R. F. (2018). Predictors of Success Among High School Students in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Programs. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62(4), 350–373. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986218758443

Wachowiak, G. M. (2015). Dual enrollment experiences: Perceptions of readiness for postsecondary education (Order No. 3732521). Available from ProQuest Central; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global; Social Science Premium Collection. (1734891739). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.rowan.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdissertations-theses%2Fdual-enrollment-experiences-perceptions-readiness%2Fdocview%2F1734891739%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D13605