In collaboration with Palomar Community College (PCC), Westview administrators are in the process of developing on-campus dual enrollment courses to be offered either during the 2024-2025 school year or in a later year. While The Nexus applauds Westview’s efforts in developing curriculum to make community college courses more accessible to high school students, we must point out that it is an unnecessary addition to our already academically rigorous climate. The Nexus does not endorse dual enrollment being implemented at Westview with its current level of planning given that it is an extraneous process that acts counterproductively to preparing students for higher education.
With the proposed dual enrollment courses, students will be able to choose between honors-level, AP-level, and community college courses. With this overbearing number of accelerated course choices, students will invariably feel even more pressure to take ever-more demanding course loads than they feel prepared for. While high school is meant to prepare students for the next level of education and next phase of life, putting students in college-level courses during high school negates the entire purpose of attending high school at all.
According to Assistant Principal and Dual Enrollment Planning Committee member Teri Heard, teachers would have no way of assessing when students are prepared for dual enrollment courses, nor would they know how a student is doing once they are in a dual enrollment class if it is taught by a Palomar teacher.
“If a Palomar teacher comes on campus and teaches, parents and Westview administration don’t have access to a student’s grades on Synergy or Canvas, so we wouldn’t be able to see how a student is doing in class,” Heard said. “This can be hard because [administration] is trying to nurture students, to advise them, to help them succeed.”
Additionally, due to the fact that enrolling in dual enrollment will subsequently begin students’ cumulative college GPAs, it can be a more detrimental choice than a beneficial one for students who are unprepared for dual enrollment, as it will preemptively lower their scores.
Aside from its effect on student success, dual enrollment courses also fail to take into consideration the role of current Westview teachers. The California Community College system requires all educators to have a master’s degree in their academic field. Heard said this sets limitations on the number of Westview teachers who are eligible to teach dual enrollment courses as many teachers have degrees in education or other subjects that are non-specific to certain dual enrollment classes that would render them ineligible to teach dual enrollment. With these parameters in place, current Westview teachers’ abilities to be involved in the dual enrollment program and Westview’s growing curriculum would be stifled.
Further, for every dual enrollment class Westview adds, there exists one more course that the school and the Poway Unified Board of Education lacks jurisdiction over. The board exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that its district’s K-12 instruction is meeting academic standards, implementing college courses would significantly mitigate the degree of autonomy
Dual enrollment does not have a place at Westview given that it is an unnecessarily rigorous addition to a school with already robust course offerings both in subject matter and difficulty levels.
