ST. JOHN — The dual credit program, which annually provides hundreds of Lake Central students with thousands of hours of college credits, could be in jeopardy under a rule adopted by the state’s Higher Learning Commission, Lake Central Superintendent Lawrence Veracco said.
Veracco told the School Board the commission decided in 2015 to require those teaching dual credit courses to have a master’s degree or higher. The deadline for doing this was recently pushed back to the fall of 2022. In addition, Purdue Northwest recently set its own deadline of the fall of 2019 for the master’s requirement.
Veracco said the commission’s deadline will be tough enough, but the Purdue Northwest requirement will be impossible to meet except by teachers already close to obtaining a master’s. Many of those who might be able to complete the master’s study also are close to retirement, he said. The HLC accredits degree-granting post-secondary educational institutions.
“Indiana is one of 19 states governed by the HLC meaning once the new credentialing is effective, Indiana’s colleges and universities will not grant credit to students unless the teacher is certified,” he said.
Dual credit attraction growing
School districts are required by state law to offer at least two dual credit courses, which allow the student to receive both high school and college credit. Lake Central began offering courses in 2008-9 and issued 200 dual credits that first year. It has grown to 4,623 credit hours during the 2015-16 school year involving 1,077 students. Of those credit hours, 1,482 were used by students attending Purdue Northwest.
According to the Indiana Department of Education, only about a quarter of Indiana’s teachers have a master’s while another 12.6 percent are anywhere from one to nine credits short of 18 credit hours needed to qualify. While students pay $25 per credit hour to take the dual credit courses, Veracco said there is no incentive for teachers to seek the additional education needed to meet the new requirement.
Veracco said the school district could help pay for the tuition, but there’s no guarantee a teacher would stay after getting the degree. The other alternative is to add a stipend to the teachers’ pay for teaching the courses, but the district would need additional funding support from the state.
Other solutions Veracco mentioned include allowing school districts to share dual credit teachers or allowing students to take distance learning courses with a qualified dual credit teacher. So far there is no legislation before the Indiana General Assembly to address these problems.
Veracco said he doesn’t understand why the HLC allows a college to offer a course taught by a teaching assistant while Lake Central and other districts can’t do the same with a teacher with 20 years’ experience. He said one of the reasons the HLC increased the teaching requirements lies with the colleges and universities being unhappy about not being able to retain students longer.
It used to be the institutions were willing to accept a higher attrition rate among students, but, as the need for funds increased, they try to help students continue for the whole four or five years to graduation.
Many students finish in less than four years
With the dual credits, many students can finish in less than four years. The group Ready NWI has met with state legislators and will meet in April with a former legislator, who is now a member of the HLC, to try to find solutions to the problem. Ready NWI is a nonprofit initiative that embraces a commitment to regional thinking to ensure prosperity by meeting the skill and education needs of employers.
“The General Assembly at one point in time made it mandatory for every school to offer dual credit in order to expose high school students to rigorous coursework,” Veracco said. ”Now that the ability to offer these courses is in jeopardy, we hope our representatives will focus their attention on how to address the dual credit teacher certification issue."
If nothing is done, Veracco said, “Things will be sort of OK until 2022, when they are going off a cliff.”