Last week the Omaha World Herald wrote an article about dual credit classes. Dual credit classes are high school classes in which students can earn both high school and college credit at the same time. Bancroft-Rosalie School currently offers 4 dual credit classes. All four classes are taught for credit through Northeast Community College.
These classes are: English Composition 3 hours, British Literature 3 hours, Calculus 5 hours, and World History 3 hours.
Ronda Ras teaches the English Composition and British Literature, Dennis Zavadil teaches the Calculus, and Kate Trindle teaches the World History through distance learning from Wisner-Pilger. This year Mrs. Ras taught students at Lyons-Decatur using distance learning. Calculus was offered over distance learning but no other schools chose to participate this year. In past years Mr. Zavadil has had students from Wakefield, Wynot, and Giltner take the class.
Dual credit offers students the opportunity to get some college requirements completed prior to entering school in the fall. These courses can help students to complete college sooner than they normally would.
The admissions director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln questioned whether dual credit classes taught by high school teachers adequately prepared students for subsequent college classes they would take. I don't believe that is an issue with the classes we are offering. These 14 hours are intended to meet the general education requirements, not to take the place of a first year class and jump right into a second year class. For example, if a student wanted to be a math major and plans to take Calculus I dual credit and start in Calculus II as a college freshman, he had better do very well in Calc I at B-R, or consider retaking Calc I in college.
Another issue that was mentioned in the article was the lack of transferability of dual credit classes to out-of-state colleges. Our students have not had a problem with the credits transferring to any colleges. There has been one situation where the college accepted the credits as electives rather than general education credits, so the student still had to take the composition class required of all freshman at that college. But in-state colleges all accept the credits for gen ed requirements.
