Washington State: Smoothing the path from high school to postsecondary

Legislation recently signed by Governor Chris Gregoire makes intentional efforts to render the senior year of high school more meaningful, and increase the likelihood that options such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and others will translate into in the postsecondary credits that students and parents often assume students will automatically receive.

H.B. 1808 requires:

• A potential overhaul of the senior year: Every public high school must, within existing resources, work to offer the equivalent of a year's worth of postsecondary credit toward a certificate, apprenticeship program, technical degree, or associate or baccalaureate degree. The high school courses referred to here have a related proficiency exam or demonstrated competencies to show students have gained postsecondary knowledge and skills.
• Raising student and parent awareness of opportunities for college credit: High schools must inform students and their families, particularly those from underrepresented groups, of the availability of such courses that qualify for postsecondary credit. Students are to be encouraged to "to use the twelfth grade as the launch year for an advance start on their career and postsecondary education."
• Coming closer to postsecondary consensus on awarding of dual credit: Public postsecondary institutions must develop a master list of postsecondary courses (lower-division general ed. requirements or postsecondary professional technical requirements) that can be completed by achieving minimum scores on Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or other recognized college-level proficiency exams, or by demonstrated competencies. However, the legislation does not require postsecondary institutions to come to absolute agreement on cut scores and demonstrated competencies that will earn high school students PS credit--they must do so "To the maximum extent possible"--which may leave institutions some degree of wiggle room.
• Developing 1 year of college credit that may be earned before HS graduation: Each institution, in developing its certificate, technical degree program, two-year academic transfer program, or freshman and sophomore courses toward a bachelor's degree, must identify "the equivalencies of at least one year of course credit and maximize the application of the credits toward lower division general education requirements that can be earned" via minimum scores on exams such as AP and IB.
• Colleges to get the word out on dual credit they will accept: Each public postsecondary institutions must clearly include in its admissions materials and on its Web site the credits or postsecondary courses that can be fulfilled by minimum exam scores or demonstrated competencies, and what those minimum exam scores and demonstrated competencies are. In addition, each institution of higher education must make this information available in a form that the state superintendent can distribute to school districts.

Students and parents nationwide would likely benefit from the broad availability of college-level credit this legislation calls for at the high school level, and from the level of transparency institutions must show in terms of what scores on which exams will and will not earn students credit in which college courses.