College Credit Plus

There have been lots of questions about the new College Credit Plus (CC+) program and so I thought it might be helpful if I gave a brief overview for all of you here.  If you have specific questions related to how it might work for you and your academic plans, please stop by and we can look at it together.

College Credit Plus provides the opportunity for students to earn college credit for free while still in high school.  The grades for your classes will be on both your high school and your college transcripts.  That is particularly important because you want to make sure you do well in the college classes.  There are a few different ways that CC+ can be utilized by students.

You can go to the college to take classes.  You will need your own transportation to the college in order to pursue this option, but you have the choice to enroll in classes of interest which are in the college's course catalog.  You will have to meet the pre-requisites for the classes you select and/ or place into that course.

You can take particular high school classes taught by WKHS teachers and earn college credit for them.  The classes which are options for this avenue of CC+ include Pre-Calculus, Honors Pre-Calculus, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, Intro to Business, and Intro to Programming Logic.  We will be holding a brief meeting in the auditorium during lunch periods next Tuesday for all of the students who have signed up for one of these classes to make sure you fully understand the steps you must take if you want to take advantage of the opportunity to earn college credit for the classes you have already signed up to take.  Please make sure you attend this meeting during your lunch because we will also talk about Compass testing that will be held at WKHS during this meeting and these are the placement tests most of you will need to take to be eligible to enroll in the college course.

You can take classes taught by college instructors at WKHS.  This is referred to as the model pathway of CC+.  Columbus State Community College instructors will be coming to WKHS to teach English, Psychology, Government and Sociology next year.  The classes will meet every other day for a 2 period block.  We anticipate that this block will happen during 1st/ 2nd period.  So, for example, during the first semester, English 1110 (Intro to Composition) will be taught from 8:00 - 9:20am on Mondays and Wednesdays and Psychology 1100 (Intro to Psychology) will be taught from 8:00 - 9:20 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  During the 2nd semester, the courses will be English 2367 (Composition 2) on Monday and Wednesdays again, POLS 1100 (US Government) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then Sociology 1100 (Intro to Sociology) will be taught on Friday mornings from 8:00 - 9:20, but this class will also have an online component as well that students will complete independently.  Students can take one college class or all of them - whatever meets your own individual plans and goals.

College Credit Plus is a state program with specific state mandated requirements that all students who want to participate must complete.

One of those requirements is that students and parents must participate in a counseling and information session prior to signing up to participate.  We held this meeting at WKHS on February 9th and had a great turnout, but I know other students missed the chance to attend and have decided that they might be interested in participating.  If you are in that situation, you can either watch the video of the presentation (it is available on the WKHS Counselor website) or you can go to a meeting that is going to be held at CSCC on March 14th (information about registering for this meeting is also on the WKHS Counselor website).

Another state requirement is that all students who intend to participate in CC+ during next school year must submit an intent to participate form to your high school counselor by April 1st.  One important component to keep in mind about this deadline is that although the state says it has to be turned in by April 1st, you actually must submit your forms to me by Friday, March 27th because we will be on Spring Break after that and so I won't be here to collect, compile and submit your data if you don't turn it in before break.

We are going to be having COTC and CSCC coming to WKHS to administer the Compass tests which are the placement tests for the college classes.  The dates and times are still being finalized, but we will make sure that all students who submit their intent to participate forms have the chance to get signed up.

There is additional information available on the WKHS Counselor website.  Right now it is on the home page of the site - just scroll down a little to find it.

As I mentioned, if you want to sit down and map out how this could actually look for you and your classes, please feel free to stop by and see me.