Modesto JC announces ‘dramatic’ progress to bring college classes to local high schools
Modesto Junior College has announced a big step in digging itself out from the bottom of state community colleges in terms of dual enrollment.
Last year, Modesto Junior College set a goal: 75% of local high school students should have at least one college course under their belts before graduation.
At present, few students have the opportunity, known as dual enrollment. The Bee found in December that years of poor communication, leadership turnover and delays have left Modesto Junior College’s high school offerings among the worst in the state.
But on Monday, the college announced a “dramatic” expansion of the so-called California College and Career Access Pathways classes in the 2023-24 school year.
“MJC offered just three such CCAP classes in the fall of 2022. In the fall 2023 semester, however, MJC expects to offer 37 CCAP courses to more than 1,100 high school students,” the Yosemite Community College District Chancellor’s Office announced. Thirteen different school districts each will offer a few different classes with some high schools like Beyer offering many “CCAP courses.” In Patterson, a high school will offer an MJC class on logistics just a few blocks away from the recently opened Amazon warehouse.
Under CCAPs, high school students take college classes with their peers during the regular school day and gain regular college credit. The CCAP setup has gained popularity in recent years and become the gold standard for high school and college administrators looking to boost college enrollment, especially for underrepresented students.
“We’re thrilled about next year,” said Brian Sanders, MJC’s interim vice president of instruction. “We’re going from a program with dual enrollment options that were not well defined to a group of engaged partners all across our service area.”
While the new classes represent less than 3% of the high school students in Stanislaus County, Sanders stressed that the current expansion is the beginning of a new trend.
Previously, none of the county’s largest school districts offered what Sanders called “true CCAP” classes, either because legal agreements regarding the CCAP classes did not exist or the contracts in place were too restrictive.
While MJC can offer dual enrollment without a CCAP agreement, the logistics are complicated and create barriers for some students. For instance, under a CCAP, textbook fees are waived. Communication also is a common challenge. “We have had students charged hundreds of dollars for enrolling in courses over the limit and students who have F’s on their college transcripts who did not remember they had enrolled in a course,” Turlock Unified School District spokeswoman Marie Russell told The Bee for the December article.
In the coming months, Sanders expects the Yosemite Community College District board will sign new agreements with the Modesto, Ceres and Turlock school districts, among others.
“We’ve been doing parallel planning,” said Sanders: preparing high school students to take new MJC classes this fall while finalizing the contracts.
The new classes, which include college-level English, math and psychology, hinge on the ability of community college district and school districts to execute those agreements.
Sanders and dean of enrollment Angelica Guzman joined MJC’s administration last year to tackle challenges around dual enrollment, including delays regarding CCAP agreements and concerns from high school administrators about poor communication.
In his closing remarks to the Yosemite Community College District board, consultant Scott Siegel (a former Ceres Unified superintendent) emphasized the ways that MJC and school districts have improved communication in recent months. Once he brought MJC and high school administrators together, he said, “the barriers just kind of melted away.”
While Paul Rutishauser, Ceres Unified’s director of secondary education, acknowledged “logistical challenges” still exist, he said dual enrollment has gone from an aspiration to a tangible reality in the course of the last few months.
“We have a ways to go in order to meet the goal of 75% of students earning dual enrollment credits, but we know it’s a marathon and not a sprint,” said John Acha, director of CTE and program equity with the Turlock Unified School District.
Modesto City Schools said it is finalizing its agreement with MJC and declined to comment further.
This story was originally published February 16, 2023 at 7:44 AM.
