*Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect that the state only pays for Isaac Bear students' tuition.
Over the summer, the New Hanover County Board of Education spent a lot of time scrutinizing the teaching of a single book from an Advanced Placement (AP) course — Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You — which included questions about how an AP course curriculum is put together and how effective they are overall.
Foust said he wanted to look at the other way NHCS students earn college credit, dual enrollment courses — and evaluate whether students are adequately prepared and whether the courses themselves are always worth the cost.
Related - NHC Board and Superintendent discuss AP course policy, dual-enrollment concerns
Last year, the state paid close to $413,000, for New Hanover County Schools students, from Isaac Bear Early College, to take UNCW courses. For those students who take CFCC courses, tuition is waived because of the state’s Career & College Promise (CCP) program. For CFCC and UNCW fees and books, the district paid close to $287,000 for those attending the district’s specialty high schools (students from other schools foot their own book and fees bill).
Dual enrollment and Advanced Placement
To receive college credits while in high school, New Hanover County students have two main choices: they can take Advanced Placement (AP) courses, typically offered on their high school campuses, or they can ‘dually enroll’ and take classes at UNCW or Cape Fear Community College.
These dual enrollment courses sparked debate starting at the August school board meeting. It began when Board Member Josie Barnhart introduced a motion to mandate that all students take the Advanced Placement exam. That failed, but it prompted Superintendent Dr. Charles Foust to say he wanted to look more closely at the students who sign up for college-level courses at CFCC and UNCW.
In August, Foust said there needed to be more oversight in the way in which the district allows students to sign up for these dual enrollment courses. He said he wanted to ensure those students are ready to take these higher-level classes because once those students take them, thus receiving college-level credit, it becomes a part of their official college transcript.
Since Foust and the board agreed in August that they needed more information on the selection process for these courses, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Patrice Faison presented at the October meeting.
She said, first, in response in part to Barnhart’s question about how well students are doing in the district’s AP courses, the district had a pass rate of at least 54% last school year. Faison said students typically receive college credit in the North Carolina university system if they receive at least a three out of five on the AP exam.
Regarding Barnhart’s failed motion to mandate the exam, Faison said from 27 AP teachers surveyed — 56% of them said they wanted to require the exam, but 44% said they didn’t want that.
And the majority of AP students do take the exam — a rate of about 91%. The state pays for AP students to take the test, but according to recent reporting from the New York Times, the total price tag that state governments pay is not easily found. And these testing fees make up a large portion of the College Board’s revenues.
And while the district says it’s typically a positive thing that programs like AP do introduce students to college-level rigor, Foust said he was more concerned about the types of courses that students select at CFCC and UNCW.
For UNCW courses, in particular, he said, “If you're taking basket weaving at the university level, we shouldn't be paying for that; we shouldn't give them just the whole plethora to run with. We have to have pathways, like for our CTE (Career and Technical Education) program.”
The state pays for the tuition for Isaac Bear NHCS students to take UNCW courses, and it’s waived for those students taking classes at CFCC.
Dual enrollment costs and enrollment numbers
When New Hanover County high school students from SEA-Tech, Isaac Bear, and Wilmington Early College take courses at the UNCW or CFCC, the district pays for their textbooks and fees. Students attending the other high schools pay for these themselves.
The following table shows over the last three years what the district has paid to CFCC and UNCW for those textbooks and fees for those specific high school students from SEA-Tech, Isaac Bear, and WEC:
FY 2021 | FY 2022 | FY 2023 | |
CFCC | $93,078 | $115,190 | $93,511 |
UNCW | $58,409 | $171,637 | $155,470 |
In terms of tuition, UNCW invoices the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) for Isaac Bear students taking courses each term, over $200,000 per semester for the last three terms: Fall 2022 — $203,453.49, Spring 2023 — $209,191.86, and Fall 2023 — $238,626.87.
143 students took 330 UNCW courses last year, most of them coming from Issac Bear, a high school located on the university’s campus. The top courses that these students take are ones like college writing, general chemistry, and introduction to statistics.
At CFCC, the Career and College Promise program (CCP) allows for the district’s high school students to begin a degree at a local community college.
While tuition is waived for these students, there were 1,560 CFCC courses where students did not receive college credit, meaning they didn’t earn at least a ‘C.’ In total, 73% of NHCS students who took CFCC courses pass with at least a ‘C’, and 27% don’t receive credit for taking the class. In contrast, 94% of those students who take UNCW courses make at least a ‘C’, and 6% won’t receive credit.
The funding allocations specifically to high school students taking CFCC courses are not as straightforward as how it works with UNCW.
A spokesperson for the state community college system (NCCCS) said that, “while these courses are not free, they are also not billable because of the CCP tuition waiver.” However, he said, state “funds come to the colleges as part of the FTE (full-time equivalent) earned for every course and student enrolled.”
So these high school students are included in enrollment statistics, which are then used to determine a community college’s overall budget. It’s a complicated formula.
Dual enrollment has remained popular while traditional post-graduation attendance has dropped off, according to Hechinger Report, a non-partisan, non-profit that focuses on education journalism. According to reporting from this summer, dually enrolled high school students make up nearly 1 in 5 community college students. Dual enrollment is surpassing AP courses, making these students into “modest money makers,” because they help increase funding from the state based on FTE.
(Dually enrolled students have also caused issues for the college. Back in 2021, CFCC received a ‘coaching letter’ from the state community college system, noting that students were registering themselves for classes outside of their “approved pathways” — and college auditors had to make “many adjustments” for budget FTE errors.)
For the 2022-2023 school year, there were 1,700 dual enrollment students at CFCC — making up just shy of 20% of the college’s roughly 8,700 students. Those students took on average about three or four courses each, commonly picking classes like general psychology, precalculus/algebra, and public speaking — although dual-enrollment students took a total of 363 different courses.
The bulk of the high school students who took CFCC courses last year came from Laney High School (441), followed by Hoggard High School (407).

So, how successful are the students?
For dual-enrolled students in the most recent academic year, 73% of CFCC and 88% of UNCW students received As and Bs. Around 11% of CFCC and 8% of UNCW students received Cs and Ds and 12% of CFCC and 5% of UNCW students got failing grades.
It’s worth noting that CFCC and UNCW use slightly different grading scales, so while they’re close it’s not an exact apples-to-apples comparison.
CFCC uses an ‘8-point’ scale that translates letter to number grades as follows: A = 92-100, B = 84- 91, C = 76-83, D = 68-75, F = 0-67. UNCW uses a slightly different scale: A = 91-100, B = 81- 90, C = 71-80, D = 61-70, F = 0-60.
New Hanover County Schools uses a scale that’s closer to UNCW, but still slightly different: A = 90-100, B = 80-89, C = 70-79, D = 60-69, F = 0-59.
Faison mentioned this, noting that the college might be looking to align with them.
Recommendations for dual enrollment students at CFCC
Faison said the district adopted recommendations to improve the grade distribution at CFCC.
She said they are looking into ways for counselors to give ‘grade report alerts’ when students are failing CFCC courses.
They’re also recommending that students who make a ‘C’ will be placed on academic probation for CCP courses and any student who makes below this will not be allowed to take more of these courses until the grade improves to a ‘B’ or above.
They add that students who have failed a CFCC course or previously dropped one without their counselor’s knowledge will also not participate in these courses in the future.
At the board’s November agenda review meeting, they invited several AP teachers to speak on what issues they’re seeing with AP and dual enrollment courses.
Two of them said they were specifically concerned about the level of rigor at CFCC.
Hoggard High AP Statistics teacher Curt Budd said that he used to think that if the high school offered the course, then the student shouldn’t be taking it at CFCC; however, he did say that students have so many different needs now that it doesn’t quite make sense to limit their choices.
But Budd did say, ”It does irk us a little bit the courses that they take – they can take the same courses and it’s not as rigorous. We can’t promise if you’re going to take a precalculus at CFCC you’ll be ready for AP Calculus.”
Laney High AP Calculus teacher Randi Metz agreed with Budd. “If they take precalculus at CFCC, they leave a lot of stuff out, the content is not the same,” making them less prepared for her AP calculus courses, she said. “I’m having to play catch up in that course because they took it at Cape Fear.”
She said that one of her students relayed the following to her about CFCC courses, “‘There isn’t a lot of incentive to take AP classes because when you can take CFCC classes - they’re easier and you’re guaranteed the credit,’ so that speaks volumes to me when a kid is saying that.”
Below: Presentation by Dr. Patrice Faison on dual enrollment and AP from October.
231003NHCSAPCFCCUNCWPRES by Ben Schachtman on Scribd