Reply to Duel Enrollment Options in FCPS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I feel like my kids counselor is always trying to talk them into easier/lower classes and I have never been able to figure out why! [/quote] It's because there are a lot of pushy parents who expect their kids to take the highest level offered without considering the kids' interests, strengths, or time and because the achievement-oriented culture can make them feel like they have to take classes because their parents want them to or their friends are taking them. FCPS is open enrollment at the HS level, so anyone can sign up for any class, there's no barrier to entry on AP classes, whether the actual kid is ready for it or not. The message I hear from my kids' school is that the kids should take the right level for them and some realism about the time/reading commitments for some of the AP classes. The school is sometimes the only ones telling them that they don't have to take AP everything.

University DE credits are just as easy to check as APs, too. The FCPS publishes the VCCS course numbers for the DE classes, and most colleges have a transfer credit lookup portal where you can see what school accept the credits. My kid takes a mix of AP and DE, and there is nowhere we've looked (even OOS) that won't give them credit for freshman English for one of the ENG 111/ENG 112 series DE courses (Mason will only credit ENG 112, but they're the exception). The types of schools that don't take DE credit (which is basically a community college transfer class) are typically the same ones that don't give AP credit either.

I think some of the "less rigorous" perception come from investment in and marketing of the AP system and snobbery about community colleges. I see the value of the national/unified curriculum of the AP courses, but having the entire course hinge on a single exam is not ideal and the College Board does a good job marketing their $100/pop exams. We have a very good community college system in Virginia, and it would be nice if FCPS levered it to offer some of the types of program that other states do where advanced students can basically graduate with an associate's degree and their diploma at the same time (my niece and nephew are in this type of program in NYC).

At one of our college nights, someone asked a panel of college admissions officers if colleges considered the two differently, and all of the admissions reps said no, DE and AP were college-level and considered high-rigor. Our school counselor moderating felt the need at the end to overrule them and say that the high school encouraged AP and felt that was the highest rigor, but it sounded like a justification for why they offer 30+ AP courses and only 4 DE courses on campus. The people in the admission office actually reviewing applications didn't express a preference.[/quote]

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