Franklin Community High School seniors receive their diplomas at the school’s graduation ceremony May 21, 2022. Students will soon be able to graduate with a year’s worth of college credits through Indiana College Core.
DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
Students at Greenwood and Franklin high schools will soon be able to graduate with a year’s worth of college credits already earned.
Students were already able to earn college credits in advance through Advanced Placement and dual credit classes. Starting this fall, however, students will be eligible to earn credits through the Indiana College Core, or ICC program. With the program, they’ll graduate high school with 30 credits, which they can transfer to any Indiana public college, such as Indiana University, Purdue University, Ivy Tech Community College and IUPUI, among other schools.
Given the cost of tuition, the program could save students as much as $20,000, Greenwood Community High School Principal Michael Gasaway said.
Gasaway worked as principal of Madison Consolidated High School for five years, where about a third of students were graduating with 30 credits under their belts, he said.
“We were hitting the $5 million mark of families’ savings from college expenses over the five years,” Gasaway said. “We were looking at 60 to 70 kids out of a class of 200 earning it.”
School leaders have identified 39 incoming seniors who have good academic standing and enough college credits already earned to be able to complete the program with just one year left. Moving forward, however, students will have more notice about the program so they can take steps to complete it throughout their high school careers, which will lead to greater enrollment, said Lisa Laug, Greenwood High School’s college and career director.
“Our hope is we can identify students who can achieve this next year, and we hope to start advertising this and getting the word out to students in eighth grade or below where we have students coming in and saying ‘I want to do this,’” Laug said. “Our goal is to always prepare students to be successful in the post-secondary level. This program is just one of the ways we can help students do that.”
Public colleges statewide developed ICC in response to Senate Enrolled Act 182 in 2012. In order to teach ICC classes, teachers must have a master’s degree in the content they’re teaching. Greenwood High School will offer ICC classes through Indiana University in house through those teachers, Gasaway said.
In order to complete the program’s requirements, students will need to complete classes in the areas of: speaking and listening, quantitative reasoning, arts and humanities, social and historical studies, and natural and mathematical sciences, according to a document from Greenwood High School.
A few classes, including Human Biology, Chemistry 101 and Earth Science, students will need to complete through Ivy Tech Community College, but can do so online. In the coming years, school leaders plan to bring those classes in house as well, Gasaway said.
Franklin Community High School isn’t too far behind. School leaders plan to offer the program to students starting with the Class of 2025, which is in the incoming junior class. This will allow those students enough time to plan their coursework, said Laura Mattox, assistant principal at Franklin Community High School.
“In April, I started conversations with the kids. I met with them and told them exactly what they needed to do,” Mattox said. “The kids understood exactly how impactful the program could be for them.”
While the program gives students the ability to graduate from college a year early, it can also give them time to figure out what they want to do in life, with the eased pressure of a year’s worth of college credits earned at no cost, she said.
“Kids will pay $0 for basically freshman year taken care of, but by no means do I think a kid should rush through college,” Mattox said. “They could study abroad for a semester or a year, they could do a 3-2 program, where they finish their master’s degree in a shorter time. They could do a semester of research if they wanted the full four years of the college experience.”
Credits from ICC also transfer to some private colleges, such as the University of Indianapolis and Hanover College, and some out-of-state schools, including the University of Cincinnati and the University of Dayton, Laug said.
Center Grove High School has had the program for several years, with 114 seniors completing its requirements this spring. The program is paying off for students, said Tracy McMahen, director of the Center Grove High School Early College program.
“As they head to college, they’ve started by getting a lot of general ed out of the way. It allows students to get courses toward their major much sooner than other classmates,” McMahen said. “The rigor of courses leaves them prepared for success heading into their freshman year of college.”
