Jay pushing college readiness

About 30 incoming sophomores at Jay County High School will receive intense preparation for college as part of the College and Career Ready program.
“The nice thing about this early college program is that they are going to all be together. They’re going to receive additional support from a couple of our staff members,” principal Chad Dodd said. ‘They’re going to focus on learning college preparedness skills — note taking, organization, studying for the college entrance exams.”
These students, who are the first group at JCHS to receive this amount of preparation, will also go on college visits with staff and have Skype or FaceTime sessions with recent Jay County graduates now in college.
“These 30 kids are going to get kind of an introduction to what college is as sophomores, with an opportunity to earn enough credits to cut a year or two off their college career,” Dodd said.
“I think it’ll give them an idea of what college is like,” director of guidance Vickie Reitz added. “And (colleges) are saying that students that come in with 15 credit hours are kids that stay and don’t drop out. … I think (our students) learn pretty fast ‘Can I do this? Will I do this?’ or ‘This isn’t for me.’”

Available to all students are a variety of dual credit classes, which will be taught at the high school and have been approved by at least one college for credit as well.
Joining the dual credit list this year are 14 classes in theatre, music, electricity, manufacturing, physics, speech, anatomy and physiology, biology, calculus, French, German, business and history.
This brings the total number of dual credit classes to more than 40, Dodd said. Some classes might not be offered every year, but they’re available at least every other year so every student has a chance to take them as a junior or senior.
Some of the classes are free, and others — those in the Core Transfer Library, a list of classes that will transfer to every state school in Indiana — are $25 per credit hour.
“It’s very, very reasonable for the student,” Reitz said.
During the 2014-2015 school year, students saved $212,725 on 1,622 credit hours from Ivy Tech alone. Indiana University, Vincennes University and Ball State University classes are available too.
If students want to take classes online that aren’t offered as dual credit at school, that’s also an option, though a more expensive one at around $200 per class. But that’s still less than they would pay a few years later as a college student.
This year, teachers with bachelor’s degrees only can teach dual credit classes. Reitz expects that in two years a master’s degree will be required, though the timeline could change.
Almost 30 teachers — about half of those at the school — teach dual credit classes. Of those, about six have a master’s degree.
“Our state legislature has de-incentivized going back and taking further education, because there’s no pay increase for that,” Dodd said.
Dual credit teachers may get help from the colleges JCHS works with. Ivy Tech, for example, plans to offer six credit hours for free, Reitz said.
Students who don’t plan on going to college have options for getting more than a high school education too.
Manufacturing students, for example, have the opportunity to earn various certifications, which can make them a more attractive potential employee. They can go to work already having completed training that an employer would otherwise have to pay for, Dodd said.
“For years ... the push was really ‘everybody’s got to go to college, everybody’s got to go to college, everybody’s got to go to college’ and I just don’t believe that’s the case,” Dodd said. “Kids need maybe some kind of education beyond high school. Maybe some kind of certificate, some kind of credential, some kind of specialized training, but they don’t necessarily need four years of school.”