The West Windsor-Plainsboro school district has introduced new limits on participation in a popular program that allows students to earn high school credits over the summer via online or classroom courses that speed through material at an accelerated pace. The revised guidelines address widespread concerns among teachers and administrators that summer courses offer an inferior academic experience and that too many students take them only to burnish their college applications.
District officials will present the new guidelines for the program, known as “Option ii,” at an open meeting at High School South on Tuesday, January 14, at 7 p.m. After the administrators and supervisors present information on the Option ii process , parents and students will be able to meet with local Option ii providers.
Each summer hundreds of WW-P students earn credits in online and classroom courses as part of a state-approved program. Students who earn credits over the summer can catapult into advanced classes in September. “Many of my Asian peers skip courses, and I basically have to do the same to be on a level playing field,” said High School North junior Rohan Doshi, who has taken two Option ii math classes at Peddie School.
Option ii is significantly more popular in WW-P than in other districts. At Montgomery High School, which has an enrollment similar to North’s, students filled 156 slots in Option ii courses last summer. Students at North filled about five times as many slots, and students at the two WW-P high schools filled almost 1,500 slots.
WW-P introduced Option ii in 2004 after the New Jersey Department of Education released revised graduation standards that clarified the program’s primary purpose: to “serve as an alternative to traditional seat time programs” and “provide real-world connections not available in the school setting,” including community service, internships, and independent research.
But most WW-P students use Option ii to take summer classes at private schools like the Hun School or Peddie or to complete online courses. Many of the summer classes cover in 30 days what a WW-P course covers in an entire nine-month school year.
WW-P’s revised Option ii guidelines, which have been approved by the Board of Education and will take effect this summer, will continue to limit students to two Option ii courses per year. The new rules will also bar students from taking Option ii courses in the same subject in consecutive summers, unless they take a course in the subject during the intervening school year. And the district will for the first time issue a list of approved Option ii courses and will require that online courses involve regular interaction between students and instructors.
District Guidance Director Lee McDonald said the list of approved courses excludes a popular self-paced online financial literacy course involving little teacher-student interaction, which many students use to fulfill the state-mandated personal finance graduation requirement.
To earn school credit in Option ii courses, students must score a C or better on a final exam administered by WW-P at the end of the summer. In 2012 nearly two-thirds of the students who took honors-level Option ii Pre-Calculus courses did not score high enough on the final to receive credits.
McDonald said he hoped that, under the revised guidelines, students will perform better on the Option ii final exams and will take Option ii courses in order to pursue genuine interests. But he acknowledged that some students will continue to take Option ii courses primarily to enhance their college applications. “I think you’re always going to have some students who look at this as a way to get to that highest possible course — to achieve, as opposed to learn,” he said. “WW-P is a competitive district.”
Some teachers claim that many students treat Option ii not as an opportunity to participate in creative, intellectually rewarding out-of-school activities, but as a golden ticket to the honors and Advanced Placement classes that they believe impress college admissions officers.
North history teacher Christopher Bond said that students who pursue Option ii credits in humanities courses miss out on important class discussions. “While you may be able to get an A on an online course for answering multiple-choice questions,” he said, “you won’t walk away from an online course with the deeper understanding.”
McDonald echoed those concerns. “When you have a student who chooses to take a six-week course over the summer, or online, versus over the course of a school year,” he said, “that opportunity to build a skill may not have developed enough.”
Indeed, High School South sophomore Masha Zhdanova said she liked her summer history course because it was easy and did not include “boring stuff like projects or essays or collaboration with other people.”
Acceleration for its own sake is “not in the long-term interest for students,” Bond said. “Students often have a hard time thinking deeply about this issue due to where they are in their development. Parents who may not understand the larger picture push for short-term payoffs for their kids at the detriment of the long-term good.”
Some students question the relative value of summer courses. “The quality of learning at a summer course is definitely not as good as the quality of learning at school,” said Aathreya Thuppul, a junior at North who took Calculus AB last summer. In addition, the summer courses can be expensive — the math courses that Thuppul has taken at the Peddie School cost $1,500 each. Some online courses (in subjects like math and history) cost around $400.
But Doshi pronounced himself thoroughly satisfied with his Option ii classroom courses, which he said gave him an advantage over students who had spent the summer lounging on the beach or watching television. Studies have shown that summer course work and other educational activities can prevent summer learning loss, which often afflicts students from families that can’t afford enrichment activities that reinforce skills.
Some education experts attribute the United States’ alleged decline in international competitiveness — an international study by the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the U.S. 17th in education — to the lack of “a pervasive education culture,” as well as to problems like summer learning loss.
If used properly, school vacations can promote social development that summer courses can’t, said education critic and documentary filmmaker Vicki Abeles. The producer of the documentary film “Race to Nowhere,” which critiques the high-pressure culture of competitive school districts, Abeles said summer vacation — as opposed to summer school — offers a chance for “children to develop in all kinds of ways outside the class,” through such activities as attending summer camp, holding jobs, volunteering, or spending time with family. In 2011 and 2012, WW-P screenings of “Race to Nowhere” drew audiences of hundreds of parents.
Although the popularity of Option ii creates some managerial challenges, it also shows that WW-P families’ attitudes toward education differ from those in most of the country. Said McDonald: “That’s a great problem to have in terms of students wanting to have these opportunities to further their education.”
