High School CLEP Opportunities
Written by John Edmondson, Jr High & High School Resource Teacher
In CLEP American Lit I this semester, we utilized the “Kahoot!” App with our tech-savvy students to incorporate CLEP practice questions into student review and study times.
At the Academy for G.O.D. I have the pleasure of being directly involved in our high school CLEP Program. The College Board’s College-Level Examination Program (CLEP), offers students the opportunity to take college level courses while still in high school and eventually the opportunity to test out of those same courses, with credit, at the college or university they attend upon graduation. Currently at the Academy, we offer our high school students the opportunity to take up to 6 different CLEP courses during their four years with even more offerings being planned for the very near future.
There are many benefits to being able to offer these courses to our students. From a fiscal standpoint, the benefits are obvious. “From 2008 to 2018, the average tuition at four-year public colleges increased in all 50 states. On average, tuition at these schools has increased by 37%.” The ability to test out of almost an entire year’s worth of college classes, with only having to pay nominal testing fees, can save our students tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and exponentially more in future student loan repayments.
From an academic standpoint, we offer many opportunities for our students to parse out those areas and subjects where they have the greatest interest. The benefit of doing this is that it allows them time to decide where they want to focus their study in college before they start college. With CLEP, our students would have the ability to not only start college with credits toward graduation, but they would also be able to step directly into major coursework in their field of interest, side-stepping general education courses in the process.
Simon Liley & Channing Gondzar work through course material in CLEP College Composition during the 2018 Fall Semester.
In my CLEP American Literature course this Fall, I have had the opportunity to teach college-level American Literature to Freshmen! Not only do our students have the ability to receive the benefits associated with the CLEP Program, but we at the Academy for G.O.D. are intentional with our spacing and scheduling of those courses. The student’s schedules are thoughtfully designed to avoid unnecessary stress on our upperclassmen, instead spreading the college-level coursework over their entire four years instead of just the last two.
After teaching several CLEP courses, I can already testify to the fruit it has produced. Simon Liley, a 2019 graduate of the Academy for G.O.D., took the CLEP College Composition course I taught last year and was able to test out of its equivalent at the Institute for G.O.D. this past Fall. He recently shared with me his gratitude for the ability to do so, which allowed him the opportunity to take another class in his field of interest—Biblical Studies—instead. We have high hopes that Simon will be the first of countless students who will reap the benefits of our CLEP-inclusive curriculum during their high school careers.
Sources:
AbigailJHess. “The Cost of College Increased by More than 25% in the Last 10 Years-Here's Why.” CNBC. CNBC, December 13, 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/cost-of-college-increased-by-more-than-25percent-in-the-last-10-years.html.
