AWSA Early Post-Secondary Opportunities Article: ECCP, SCN, ETC!

by Tim Schell, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Waunakee Community School District

Last year’s state budget bill enacted important changes into law affecting the access of high school students to early post-secondary opportunities.  These changes eliminated the Course Options and Youth Options programs.  The Early College Credit Program (ECCP) replaces Youth Options for four year colleges and universities and the Start College Now (SCN) program is the technical college replacement.  In some respects, ECCP and SCN are related.  In other respects, they operate differently.  Student applications for fall term courses are due on March 1, so understanding the parameters of these new programs, what is new, what is the same, has some immediacy.

ECCP and SCN intersect in important ways.  As in the previous Youth Options program, School Boards may adopt a policy limiting the number of credits they will pay for under ECCP and SCN.  The lowest allowable limit is 18 credits per individual student combined across both programs.  Districts may set a higher limit and may choose to set no limit at all, but the 18 credit limit was a common feature of school board policies under Youth Options and this will probably continue to be the case in the new environment.  While districts may set a limit on total credits earned, there is no lower limit for credits earned in a term.  In addition, the way state law currently reads students may not participate in both ECCP and SCN in the same term. A student could take a UW System campus course in the fall and a technical college course in the spring, but they could not take both at the same time.  The old Youth Options comparability test still applies for both ECCP and SCN.  A school board may decline to pay for a course if a comparable course is offered at the high school. Finally, transportation costs are still the responsibility of the family with some financial support available for lower income households under both ECCP and SCN.

The technical college SCN program is the more simple transition from Youth Options.  Like Youth Options, participation is limited to the 11th and 12th grade years in high school.  Districts are responsible for tuition and there is no reimbursement from the state.   If you look up the SCN form on the WTCS web site, you will see it is essentially identical to the old Youth Options form.  SCN is Youth Options reinvented for technical college courses only. Over time, most post-secondary courses taken under Youth Options have been technical college courses so this continuity may be seen as helpful.

The picture with the four year college and university ECCP program is more complicated and merits close review.  First, students may participate in ECCP at any point during their 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade years, including summer terms, if they meet the “requirements and prerequisites” of the course and there is space available. Fall courses have a March 1 deadline and Spring courses have an October 1 deadline that are defined in statute. Summer term courses do not have a start date set in statue, but colleges and universities are using March 1 as the application deadline for summer term beginning in 2019.  ECCP applies to both private and public high schools.  It does not cover home schooled students.

There are significant changes to the cost structure and payment requirements from Youth Options that are generally favorable to school districts.  Tuition amounts are capped at reduced levels.  For UW System four year campuses, tuition is capped at no more than ⅓ of regular in-state tuition.  For UW Colleges tuition is capped at ½ of the regular level.  There are also reimbursements available that are new with ECCP. When a course is taken for both high school and post-secondary credit, up to 25% of the cost will be reimbursed by the state if the state budget allocation is sufficient.  If demand is higher than the budgeted level the state reimbursement will be prorated.  When a course is being taken for post-secondary credit only, the state may reimburse up to 50% of the costs and the student’s family is responsible for 25% of the cost unless this poses an undue financial burden on the family.

At the time this article was written, there was still an unresolved wild card associated with ECCP.  The ECCP statutory language in the budget bill was written in a way that includes not only courses taken at college and university campuses, but also dual-credit courses taken on-site at local high schools.  Historically, tuition for concurrent or dual-credit programs like CAPP, PIE, and many other valuable partnerships could be charged to students or their parents.  As enacted ECCP shifts those tuition costs to school districts and if this becomes our long term reality districts will face some hard choices.  Fortunately, corrective legislation is pending in the legislature in the form of Assembly Bill 805 and Senate Bill 677, which both would exempt concurrent enrollment programs from ECCP.  These bills have bipartisan support and momentum in the current legislative session but high schools and districts should carefully monitor their progress.  SAA supports these important bills.

Policies will need to be updated to reflect the changes in state law.  Districts may wish to defer updating policies until the final outcome of Assembly Bill 805 and Senate Bill 677 is known, but at some point policies will need to be revised to reflect changes in program name, affirm local limits on credits if desired, and define what the district wishes to happen if a student fails an ECCP or SCN course.  As in Youth Options, failing a post-secondary course can result in a student being barred from further participation in the program if the district defines that consequence in policy.  Even if your district chooses to wait on the policy changes, there is a benefit to discussing these topics with your school board now so you can provide your students with reliable forward-looking guidance.  It is also important to advise interested students that they may not take both ECCP and SCN courses in the same term as this will influence the four year academic and career plans of students.

Even though Youth Options has existed since the early 1990’s, it is still not uncommon to hear stakeholders question the premise of high school students being able to earn post-secondary credits on college campuses at no cost.  While there are legitimate debates to be had about who should pay for these student learning opportunities, there are clear long-term benefits that argue strongly for students starting collegiate learning during high school.  Early post-secondary opportunities have several benefits, including providing students with early exposure to college level work, experiences that help students make more informed decisions about their future plans, cost-effectiveness for students who plan to continue to college, and stronger alignment between high schools and colleges. Students who participate in early post-secondary opportunities tend to adapt more successfully in their important transitional first year in higher education.  Future state accountability report cards for high schools and districts will contain information on ECCP and other early post-secondary opportunity outcomes.

In the masterful 2006 research essay “The Toolbox Revisited:  Paths to Degree Completion from High School Through College” Clifford Adelman summarized essential findings from longitudinal data about what features and pathways make the biggest difference for young adults completing college degree programs.  The Toolbox Revisited teaches us a few important lessons and one of these is the impact of beginning the college credit timeline in high school.  Adelman found that earning at least twenty credits by the end of the first year in college was a critical boost to on-time degree completion.  Adelman also found, not surprisingly, that beginning credit accumulation in high school eased the transition experience, supported reaching the twenty credit benchmark, and contributed to on-time degree completion.  The Toolbox Revisited takes a strong stand for students entering higher education with at least six post-secondary credits with more credits being better.  Programs like ECCP and SCN provide this kind of opportunity.  These critical opportunities deserve significant state support to provide equitable access statewide to benefit students and allow high schools to partner fully without jeopardizing other important programs.

In closing, ECCP and SCN represent important changes for high schools and school districts.  The ECCP program in particular contains changes from Youth Options by including more high school grades and changing the cost structure.  There are new forms for both programs that are available from the Wisconsin Technical College System, the University of Wisconsin System, and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.  Whether four year university concurrent enrollment programs based in high schools will be included in the ECCP cost structure is still being debated and is an important topic for school and district leaders to monitor.