| Running Start |
Article Index for Running |
Website Links For Running |
Information AboutRunning Start |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT RUNNING START | |
| education in washington | |
|
Piloted in the early 1990s and officially approved to begin in the fall of 1993 , the Running Start program offers up to two years of paid Tuition at any state-run Community College to high school juniors. Juniors who can pass the entrance exam for the local community college may take part or all of their coursework at the community college. Their tuition is fully covered by the state, and successfully passing a course earns a student both high school and college credit for the course. The system was designed to make it possible for a motivated high schooler to take all their classes for their final two years of high school at the community college: at the end of those two years, the student would have completed the necessary credits for high school graduation, as well as having completed the necessary college credits to receive an Associate's Degree . In practice, many students choose to take only a few classes at the college, partly because of the difficulty of college coursework, and partly to keep from missing out on the social life at high school. Students are only eligible to have 18 credits per quarter paid for, and they may only have tuition covered in the fall, winter, and spring quarters of their junior and senior years in high school. When the program first started it was greeted with some initial resistance at community colleges by professors who feared they would be teaching to sixteen year olds who neither had the maturity or academic discipline to excel at the college level. This skepticism was quieted at first due to the fact that most of the students participating during the first few years of the program tended to be among the top academically in their high schools and took the community college courses very seriously since most were there to prepare for transfer to a four-year university. Unfortunately, the Running Start program has been a victim of its own success as the number of teens participating in it has swelled over the years the academic sincerity of the students has been in question. Many of high school age now look to the Running Start program as nothing more than an easier way to graduate high school since four three hour days at the community college can effectively replace a week of traditional six hour days at their high school. In addition, this has been exploited even further by some students who have been kicked out of the public school system altogether and instead of attending alternative schools are now using the Running Start "loophole" to attend community college for free. In fairness to the Running Start program's impact on these students, many mid-range students (some of whom struggle with traditional high school teaching methods) are given experience in a college setting as well as a head-start on their own degrees in the next couple years. Running Start has also provided a method for many determined students with a lack of credits to graduate on-time, and at least some students involved in the Running Start program are there because they have no other possibility of graduating on time. Nonetheless, the experience and knowledge learned is most likely quite beneficial to these students in the long run. EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|