issue: Education

Diminishing Credit II: How Colleges and Universities Restrict the Use of AP and IB Towards Earning a Degree in Less Than Four Years

Posted on by Alex Terr

Introduction

In 2016, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released an analysis of school policies regarding Advanced Placement (AP) credit. Despite being one of the few ways students could seek to graduate in fewer than four years, we discovered that the vast majority of the nation’s top schools restricted students from applying AP coursework toward degree credits. Unfortunately, despite strong evidence that successfully completed AP courses meet the standards of achievement expected by colleges and universities, the situation has deteriorated significantly as more schools seek to protect their revenue streams.

Furthermore, schools have significantly diminished the value of other college-level coursework completed before matriculation. For example, U.S. universities and colleges limit the amount of course credit awarded to students who have completed coursework through the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, which is increasingly offered throughout the country. PPI’s study shows that IB credit was typically denied at the same rate as credit as AP.

Today, more students than ever enroll in AP courses and exams. In 2023, 5.2 million AP exams were taken by high school students, up from 1.6 million in 2002. A study from the College Board, which owns AP, shows that 738,698 students, or 21.7% of students in the class of 2023, scored at least a 3, more than 2 points higher than the class of 2013.

Although still small by comparison to the reach of AP (almost 23,000 high schools offer AP courses), 900 high schools in America now offer the IB diploma. This number has risen considerably since 1971, when the first IB program was taught in a U.S. school. The granting of credit for AP and IB is one of the few ways students can reduce the cost of attending college. Presently, the average cost of attending a private, nonprofit college or university is $38,421, and $15,868 for a public university.

Students who successfully complete AP or IB courses in high school could graduate in some cases either one year or one semester early, saving them anywhere between 12.5% to 25% of the total cost of the degree.

Students have other tools that help them graduate college at a lower cost. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 20% to 50% of new university students have transferred from community college. But as students move between community college and four-year programs, many find it very difficult to navigate the system of credit transfers and agreements.

Furthermore, students looking for information on credits for AP or IB work (and courses completed at community colleges as well), often have to wait until they arrive on campus and have paid their first tuition installment. Many schools have made it increasingly difficult to figure out how much AP or IB credit will be awarded before stepping on campus. Many institutions are leaving that decision to academic departments. And more and more schools are offering only waivers on introductory courses in lieu of course credit.

For too long students have been at the mercy of college administrators — forced to pay higher tuition bills and fees for things that should be free — transcripts, tickets for graduation, etc. Policymakers need to help level the playing field by using the government’s bargaining power (the federal government is the largest source of financial aid and provides billions in research grants to colleges and universities) to negotiate lower prices and force schools to accept coursework completed elsewhere. An important step to help students get through college faster and, therefore, at a lower cost is to ensure they get credit for successfully completing college-level work before matriculating.

Read the full report.

 

Manno for Forbes: A Virtuous Cycle Of Career Education For Young People

Posted on by Max Sherrill

“Many Gen Z teens don’t feel career ready. What if we made students aware of all of the many options available to them early on, starting in middle school (or even sooner)?”

That’s the challenge for K-12 career education presented by the authors of a report entitled Success Redefined issued by American Student Assistance and Jobs for the Future. The report is based on a Morning Consult poll of over 1,100 high school graduates who opted not to go to college directly after high school.

Nearly one out of three non-college youth (32%) reports a lack confidence in knowing the steps to take to transition into a post-high school career and further education. Two out of three (64%) who did not take career pathway programs say they would have considered pathway programs if they knew more about them.

The barriers to not pursuing pathway programs include a lack of encouragement from those at school to explore them. The preferred sources of information for the post-high school plans of non-college youth were searching the web (87%) and watching online videos (81%).

Keep reading in Forbes.

Kahlenberg for The Hill: To win the working class, Democrats should champion patriotic education

Posted on by Alex Terr

Democrats face two enormous challenges in light of their disastrous 2024 election showing. The first is to defend democracy as President-elect Donald Trump, the most authoritarian figure ever elected president, takes power with a much broader mandate than in his first term.  The second is to restore the faith of working-class voters in a party that has utterly lost touch with them.

Normally, these two priorities are viewed as contradictory. After all, working people by necessity focus on kitchen table economic concerns.

But Democrats can take one important step that would simultaneously move them to the center culturally and affirm democratic norms:  create a robust program of “liberal patriotic education” that would merge a love of country with a recognition that the U.S. still needs to do much more to widen opportunity to those left behind.

Read more in The Hill.  

Manno for American Compass: Addressing the College Credibility Crisis

Posted on by Alex Terr

Skepticism about higher education has reached a fever pitch in the United States, to the point that ‘College is a scam’ is a popular meme on TikTok and YouTube,” writes Nicole LaPorte in Town & Country.

This fever pitch reflects the fact that many Americans, including young people and employers, no longer believe a college degree is the best pathway to a good job and adult success. A Wall Street Journal/NORC survey found that more than half of Americans (56%) believe a college degree is not worth the cost. Such views are strongest among those aged 18-to-34, as well as college graduates themselves.

Americans want other education and training pathways to prepare young people for the world beyond high school. One important—and underappreciated—avenue is apprenticeships, which typically integrate paid, on-the-job training with formal classroom instruction, a learn-and-earn approach that provides both school and workplace experience. As National Apprenticeship Week, a celebration of the value and importance of these types of opportunities, draws to a close, policymakers and other education and training stakeholders should re-double efforts to expand this approach.

Read more in American Compass

Manno for Philanthropy Daily: The Authorizer: What Donors Should Know About Evaluating Charter Schools

Posted on by Alex Terr

Over the past few decades, donors have poured millions of dollars into improving K-12 schooling by creating a new sector of public charter schools of choice that are accountable for results. One analysis calculates that 11,827 foundations have provided financial support to nonprofits in the charter schools category—money given not just through traditional grants but through program-related investments and social impact funds.

These donors—and charter supporters in general—have often been derided for their efforts. So has it been worth all the hassle and wrath directed at them? In short, yes. (Last week, I summarized research studies that show the salutary effect charter schools have on closing the achievement gap, reducing inequality between richer and poor students, and lifting the performance of entire school districts.) As economists Douglas Harris and Feng Chen write, “Charter school laws have been arguably the most influential school reform efforts of the past several decades.”

Since the first law creating these schools was passed in 1991, we’ve learned much about their positive impact on students, the traditional K-12 system, and the communities where they exist. I would summarize the three most important lessons like this:

  1. Charter schools reduce academic inequality by closing student achievement gaps.
  2. Charter schools raise the overall quality of public schools.
  3. Because they improve the quality of K-12 public schools, creating more charter schools reduces inequality in America.

These three lessons create what I call the virtuous improvement cycle of charter schools.

Read more in Philanthropy Daily. 

What’s Next for the Charter School Movement? feat. Starlee Coleman

Posted on by Max Sherrill

On this episode of RAS Reports, PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project Co-Director Tressa Pankovits sits down for a conversation with Starlee Coleman, the new President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The pair discuss the future of the charter school movement in the wake of the election, as well as Coleman’s priorities for the organization now that she’s taken over as CEO.

Manno for Discourse Magazine: Creating More Earn-and-Learn Apprenticeships

Posted on by Max Sherrill

As the public sours on the value of a college degree as the default pathway to success, it’s sweetening on the value of multiple pathways to success, especially earn-and-learn models such as apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are the new learning campuses, where paid work and education combine to jump-start careers.

Vice President Kamala Harris captured this sentiment during her 2024 presidential campaign: “For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success: a four-year college degree. Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths—additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.” I call this approach to creating additional paths to success opportunity pluralism.

This week, the nation celebrates the 10th annual National Apprenticeship Week. As we commemorate this celebration, it’s useful to take a look at America’s growing appetite for an increasing array of earn-and-learn apprenticeship programs.

Keep reading in Discourse Magazine.

Manno for Forbes: Lessons Starting K-12 Chartered Schools Can Help Create More Apprenticeships

Posted on by Alex Terr

National Apprenticeship Week is November 17 to 23

“Businesses don’t launch and run apprenticeships on their own. What America needs most is a thousand intermediaries working hard to make apprenticeship infrastructure where there was none before,” writes Achieve Managing Partner Ryan Craig in his book Apprenticeship Nation.

Apprenticeship intermediaries connect and serve the partner organizations that create earn-and-learn apprenticeship programs. The work of establishing lots of good ones has much to learn from the 33-year-old effort to create a new chartered sector of U.S. K-12 public schools.

National Apprenticeship Week is a suitable time to review what apprenticeship intermediaries do and suggest four lessons learned from the charter school movement that are relevant to expanding the number of intermediaries. I hope that this encourages a more thorough conversation between those from the world of chartering and the world of apprenticing that helps both groups become more effective at what they do.

Read more in Forbes. 

Manno for Philanthropy Daily: Yes, Charter Schools Do Reduce Inequality

Posted on by Max Sherrill

This is the first article of a two-part series on charter schools. The second will appear on 11/20/24 and is titled “What Donors Should Know About Evaluating Charter Schools.”

There is glaring student achievement inequality in America’s public schools. Rigorous evidence suggests that “a substantial portion of the unequal education outcomes that we see between richer and poor students is related not to home, but to what happens in school.” Charter schools are reducing that inequality by closing achievement gaps between groups and improving outcomes for all students.

Since 1991, 46 charter laws have created 8,000 schools and campuses that enroll 3.7 million students, around 7.5% of all public school students. Enrollment in these independent public school of choice that are accountable for results is increasing while traditional district school enrollment is decreasing. For example, over the five years from 2019-2020 to 2023-2024, charter enrollment grew by around 12% or 393,000 students, while district enrollment decreased by around 4% or 1,750,000 students. Around six out of 10 (58%) charter schools are in urban areas, with the remainder in suburbs (25%), rural areas (11%), and smaller towns (6%).

Has this charter growth harmed traditional public schools? And how can we be sure that charter schools are meeting the needs of students who most need help?

Over the last 18 months, four national and two state reports on charter schools were released. In what follows, I summarize those reports, providing more evidence of a dynamic, self-improving charter sector that reduces student academic inequality.

Keep reading in Philanthropy Daily.

PPI’s Bruno Manno Submits Testimony to the DC Council on Proposed Bill 25-741 Vocational Education for a New Generation Act of 2024

Posted on by Max Sherrill

The following is a national perspective testimony submitted by Bruno Manno, on behalf of the Progressive Policy Institute, to the DC Council on Proposed Bill 25-741 Vocational Education for a New Generation Act of 2024.

Many Americans, including the last wave of Gen Zers now entering high school, want schools to offer more education and training options for young people, like career and technical education, or CTE. They broadly agree that the K–12 goal of “college for all” over the last several decades has not served all students well. It should be replaced with “opportunity pluralism,” or the recognition that a college degree is one of many pathways to post-secondary success.

School-based CTE programs (there are also programs for adults) typically prepare middle and high school students for a range of high-wage, high-skill, and high-demand careers. These include fields like advanced manufacturing, health sciences, and information technology, which often do not require a two- or four-year college degree. CTE programs award students recognized credentials like industry certifications and licenses. Some programs also provide continuing opportunities for individuals to sequence credentials so that they can pursue associate and bachelor’s degrees if they choose.

Read Manno’s full testimony here.

Pankovits and Nathan on Medium: Walz’s Even-Handed Approach to Chartering

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

By Tressa Pankovits and Joe Nathan

By this stage of the election, it’s difficult to find something to write about the candidates for president and vice president that hasn’t been repeated dozens of times, but here’s one. 

Conventional wisdom has it that because Kamala Harris and her running mate have courted the teachers unions, they believe that charter schools are the enemy. Maybe there’s hope that they don’t. 

Harris picked Governor Tim Walz even though during the pandemic he listened to the pleas of charter school students with a serious problem The story that hasn’t gotten national attention, but as Harris and Walz seek to rally the youth vote in the final days of the campaign, the campaign should amplify Walz’s willingness to listen to a bunch of teenagers and act on their concerns. 

Continue reading on Medium.

Manno for Forbes: Dual Enrollment Blends High School, College, And Workforce Education And Training

Posted on by Max Sherrill

The way America prepares young people for work and life is being disrupted. Clear-cut institutional boundaries that historically separated the programs and responsibilities of high schools, colleges, and employers are now permeable boundaries.

One well-known example of these permeable boundaries is earn-and-learn apprenticeships for young people. These apprenticeships combine a job that pays with adult mentorship and related classroom instruction provided by a high school or other education and training institution. On the other hand, high school dual enrollment programs are a below-the-radar example of this disruption of institutional boundaries.

This disruption poses huge challenges for schools, colleges, and employers. But Americans have risen to this challenge before.

Keep reading in Forbes.