 Great, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. This webinar is being sponsored by the dual credit think tank on behalf of the only P 20 network in LSEP. Today we're going to be talking to you about the recent policy proposed policy changes that the higher learning commission has put forth. Oh, I don't know. Let me send this. Okay, so joining me here and we're going to go ahead and introduce ourselves just momentarily but to help us get started. Here is the bit Lee here's a link to the slide deck or the QR code. Again, like I said, for those of you who may want to go back and watch the recording and reference it. Alongside the slides, the slides themselves have many links to the information that we are talking about and dissecting as well as some resources from previous conversations that we've had related to not only dual credit but specifically faculty qualifications and teacher credentialing and all things related to dual credit. Just a quick review of the things that we're going to be talking about today and so one thing that Amy and I wanted to make sure that we established right off the bat was that what you're about to hear today is going to be contextualized and within dual credit. You know, as many of you who've been working with higher learning with the High Learning Commission, or an HLC member. You may know this already but the changes that they're being that are being proposed applied to everyone within the institution and so and we'll kind of talk that talk about the here shortly as well. But what we say today are commentary are additional references and resources are all within the context of dual credit. My name is Rodrigo Lopez. I'm the director of P 20 initiatives at the Illinois P 20 network at Northern Illinois University. And one of the things that I do on behalf of the network is co lead the dual credit think tank alongside membership and leadership of elicep and joining me today is Amy, Amy. Hi everyone, I am Amy Galvin. I am the government affairs director with Stanford Children Illinois, and I will get a little bit into what stands doesn't do credit later in the presentation. Nice to see you all today. Thank you so much Amy. And also, if you don't mind, we love to know who's here with us today. So if you can use the Chan just introduce yourself, let us know who you are and where do you work and what your role is with the institution, especially if it's within the context or if you have responsibilities related to dual credit. A couple more things related to the Illinois P 20 network, but specifically the dual credit think tank. If you are not a member of the only P 20 network please go ahead and subscribe to our newsletter. As I mentioned, we're going to make this recording available. The slide deck is here available for you to use and take back to your institutions and organizations, but we're going to continue to work on this with our partners throughout the state to continue to this this proposed policy changes. Since we know that what we're talking about here is just information that's just on the zoom. Again, if you don't mind muting yourselves, we are recording this and so it'll make it easier on us to edit afterwards. So the P 20 network alongside its partners and those in the dual credit thing tank will continue to put out resources and commentary related this and also we're here to help out in any way that we can. So, again, if you are not subscribed yet to the P 20 network newsletter, please go ahead by clicking on that link below. A little bit about the dual credit thing thing so I know that there's a lot of you who are part of the dual credit thing tank. It was established a few years ago out of the need from multiple practitioners both as the secondary and post secondary level. We needed to find a space and a setting to convene to have dialogue related to very specific issues and challenges with operations but also as we kept getting legislation about dual credit or dual credit being incorporated into other legislation. This group has been able to organize and ultimately be able to provide a consistent space specifically to go ahead and share resources dialogue and ultimately find out opportunities for us collectively as a state to enhance and and progress moving forward with having more students participate in dual credit. So, if you like more information about the dual credit thing tank and some of the work that we're doing, especially through two work groups right now, please do reach out. So a couple of things that we would like for you to keep in mind. Again, I'm sure that there's other things that you are thinking about that are specific to your organization to your partnerships. But as we've gotten down here on the screen. Again, we would love to know, especially if either now or after the fact, what types of questions do you still have for us what what thoughts what concerns what things would you like for the dual credit think tank and or the organization network to further look into to be able to go ahead and provide further clarity or guidance. But as it relates to the work that you are all doing. Obviously, as you read through the policy changes that are being proposed, it may trigger some thoughts and or opportunities on how you can come together with your partner and be able to go ahead and process through what changes could ultimately come about in terms of how you go about recruiting approving and maintaining your teacher cohorts that are teaching dual credit courses in your institutions. All right, so a little bit of background a little bit of context, the Higher Learning Commission is the accrediting body that accredits the colleges universities in the state of Illinois, along with 18 other states in the Midwest. I think at the top of the screen on this page will take you to the soon practices and there's a lot of information on here but again, today what we're going to be focusing on is on faculty qualifications. But if this is new. If this is a new topic to you, I do encourage you to go ahead and explore and kind of get a little bit of an idea of what other procedures and policies the HLC has said through its assumed practices and ultimately where to find the language on faculty qualifications. To be specific, what you're going to be looking to is noted within the teaching and learning quality resources and support section, which we're going to go ahead and drill into here in a little bit. As it relates to the proposed policy changes in the timeline, the dual credit think tank along with some of its partners that work in the higher and college universities. We did together a webinar that we did early in the academic year but ultimately that came from learning about an internal call for feedback that the HLC as college universities to participate in. And so, for reference, that link there at the top the updates to assume practices was the initial letter email communication that was sent to HLC members talking about what was forthcoming. What made it's all the way to the first reading and ultimately obviously as we're going to talk about here. What came out of the first reading after the Board of Trustees had that convening in July. For additional resources or references to some of that commentary that we had early in a year we've also linked the presentation that we that Amy and I did back in February, almost six months ago, seven months ago. And you can go ahead and reference that as needed. The changes specifically can be found through this link here and bullet point number three. But you'll also see them referenced throughout the slide deck here coming in the next few slides. And lastly, one of the things that Amy will talk about here shortly is the letter of support that was written in proposals of some of these changes, and how you can get access to it and ultimately be looking to go ahead and modify it or draft your letter to participate in the open section. So specifically to what the current policy on faculty qualification says, again the link at the top of the page will take you directly to this section on the assumed practices. And so again this is what is currently in existence. This is what's being modified. And we just wanted to go ahead and call out a few things because this is the common language of the common language is that as dual credit practitioners we often look to when we're looking to go ahead and grow our teachers in the buildings that are teaching to credit or getting to dialogue as to ultimately what the process looks like for dual credit instructors to become eligible to teach those classes. The one thing that I'll know which we'll go ahead and and also know here shortly is that in the second bullet point. What we know right now is that in order for teachers to be looking to teach general education courses instructors need either a master's in the discipline or masters in a subfield or related field in 18 credit hours in that very particular level and so that's bolded here and as you'll know here soon. That is one of the changes that's come from these proposed policy changes. I'll also like to know that one of the specific resources in our set of guidelines that has been available for HLC members but also dual credit partners those school districts that are partnering with community colleges and universities is the link that's attached to the top of the project which provides guidelines it provides a set of standards for institutions and partners to follow when thinking about how to grow their cohorts of teachers teaching dual credit courses. Again the two bullet points there are pulled from this resource to be able to note a specifically those reference points that we as dual credit practitioners often look for to help us be able to make those decisions. And specifically was pulled up because one of the changes that is being proposed, where they went to go about clarifying equivalent experience what is currently known as tested experience in the current and the assume practices. One of the last things I want to say about in terms of background and context of these proposed policy changes is that when we learned about the communication that was sent in December to HLC members. And as you see, as you might have seen now in the proposed policy changes that came out of the first reading the, the context for these policy changes was laid out as such. And you know, one of the things that we really want to be able to call out here within the context of dual credit is that HLC as an organization has been working with the Midwest and higher education compact and the National Alliance for concurrent enrollment partnerships to prominent organizations across the states who have been doing work with dual credit concurrent enrollment early college high schools in relation to looking to enhance opportunities for students to participate and so we thought that that was very critical to point out as they have themselves. Because I think it's going to influence a lot of the conversations moving forward, especially about how we as the limit between our work or the dual credit think tank and come together to be able to go ahead and put some of these opportunities into practice. And so I'm not going to go too much into detail here this slide is really here more for you to be able to reference but for those of you who are able to go ahead and take a look at the blog we wrote a couple weeks ago. This provides a very brief summary or a paraphrase of what's included in the proposed policy changes. And Amy's going to go ahead and detail these out a little further and of course at the, at the end we'll have an opportunity to be able to potentially answer some questions clarify or be able to provide additional resources. Moving on one of the questions that has come to us already a few times is this question about teachers experience as it relates to equivalent experiences so we did want to note that specifically and explicitly the HLC has included a language here at the bottom that's in parentheses and that says experience with classroom instruction as a teacher cannot alone constitute for equivalent experience. There is one that we're still looking for further guidance or clarification. It's something that is not yet included in the draft guidelines in particular draft guidelines are available for you by clicking on the link above. And before I turn it over to Amy, I do want to go ahead and just once again clarify that although our comments in this webinar is contextualized for those that are working with dual credit. These changes, if approved come at the after the second reading in November would be applicable to all faculty all instructors that are binded to the HLC institution. A couple of things that you'll find in the proposed policy changes are the following. One of the things that the HLC has removed or redacted from their assumed practices is that HLC members no longer have to move through the process of documenting and making public the credentials of faculty or those that are teaching courses and so typically this information will be available in course catalogs or online websites. And so this is one of the things that no longer has to be has to be a requirement of HLC members. And the other piece is related to curriculum. Amy. Thank you. Hi everyone. Again, my name is Amy Galvin. I'm the government affairs director with Stanford Children Illinois. Stanford Children is a educational equity organization. We do a lot of work in around the evidence based funding formula, early literacy and then a category we call high school success which includes access to high quality and dual credit among them. So this slide I did want to kind of contextualize since I will be kind of giving my opinion, obviously we're supporting this policy and I, you know, my portion of the presentation is to explain why we find this beneficial for the dual credit landscape in Illinois. So I thought it would be helpful to go a little step back and kind of contextualize how we approach it stand dual credit. So first, we believe that students benefit from dual credit courses. You know, they're for all the obvious reasons that jump on college courses, they're typically low cost. And there's a pretty significant body of research that shows that dual credit courses, you know, give students academic confidence, and it can increase their likelihood of earning a degree so we generally support these and think that there should be broader access to policies. Typically, we say some collaborative dual credit partnerships they strengthen communities. We see examples across the state where students secondary and post secondary all benefit from these partnerships. And the foundation for those strong partnerships is collaboration and communication. And that they're foundational for any kind of success in dual credit. The last kind of tenant around dual credit is that dual credit expansion faces equity and logistical challenges logistical, I'm sure is no surprise to this group. A demand is outpacing qualified teachers. You know, we are still dealing with a pretty acute teacher shortage. And then if you layer that on to the very specific requirements that you would need to teach dual credit that just that just makes the shortage even worse. We also see that a lot of teachers well meaning teachers go and get their degree in administration or in teaching or in other fields that are then bar them essentially from teaching dual credit and and and so there's a misalignment between teachers with master's degrees who who may have a master's but they may not be able to teach that dual credit course because they don't have the qualifying coursework. So of course, planning for dual credit requires a lot of resources from districts, not just teaching resources but space and technology and administration logistics transportation. Again, I'm sure this group is very well burst in all of the logistical hurdles that are required for dual credit programs. And then our dual credit expansion has some equity challenges, high costs that will of course limit your participation from your under resource districts and your families. We find that some marketing recruitment messages may not reach all students as you know there's kind of assumptions made on who dual credit is for and you know in what in what capacity. And then finally, some assessment heavy course requirements that can also be a barrier for some very capable students who can succeed there. So I thought this would be helpful to kind of tell you how we approach dual credit. And now kind of turning to the policy proposals. I, you know, let me put right up into the beginning. I don't think they're a silver bullet. Actually, Rodrigo, if you don't mind going back just one more for real quick. I don't think they're a silver bullet. In particular, really, for some of these equity challenges that we're facing in Illinois, I don't think that these these policy changes are really going to drive at the heart of any of these challenges. You know, and I don't think that, you know, obviously they do anything to really convince people that that dual credit is worthwhile, where I do think that it could be impactful is in that logistics space there, which is particularly around teacher qualifications for obvious reasons. Next, please. Thank you. Next slide. Thank you. So, how does this proposal advance equity and access, we kind of see three, three main pieces for that. It opens the door for a broader criteria, and I'll get into some detail there. It's again, it's not a silver bullet there, but it does open the door. And very importantly, it brings agency guidance into alignment with Illinois law, which is again critical for for post secondary secondary institutions who are trying to navigate the many, many different documents and guidance documents from is the CPD and HLC and everybody on how to, you know, determine a qualified credentials and how to build up your programs. And then the last point, which I won't touch on too too much is it recognizes other measures for student achievement beyond great. I think this is important. Obviously, as we're in seeing more dual credit in CTE spaces that have work based learning team based challenges portfolio work. So just recognizing there's a lot of ways to measure student success. So next slide. Next slide. I'm actually going to skip that one. Quick. The first point is it opens the door to broader criteria for evaluating faculty credentials. So on the left side of this table, you can see kind of current policy and then the proposed. Most importantly, the current policy says pretty pretty black and white that you have to have a an academic degree higher than what you're teaching and in most instances that would be a master's degree for general education courses it explicitly says it needs to be a master's and then it does go on to talk a little bit about determining minimum thresholds for evaluation process for equivalent experience but that's pretty much all it says on that. And then it does say that if a faculty has a master's degree in a different discipline in which they're teaching they must have that minimum of 18 hours. The current proposed policy the proposed policy says that the institution will then maintain and establish reasonable policies and procedures. So it shifts from HLC providing guidance to basically saying an institution can police themselves on this place in this place of quality quality faculty qualifications. And it says it suggests make some suggestions it says it may include academic credentials, which HLC then does define and they use the same definition to say that academic credentials would typically mean a master's degree, and probably the 18 credit hours. They recognize for the first time progress for its academic credentials, which is not included in the in the in the current HLC guidance. And then they do say that some version of equivalent experience which again can be determined by the by the post secondary institution can be all looked at and evaluate to determine what makes a faculty qualified. This combination is it is a step forward and that's why we say it opens the door for broader criteria. What this does mean is that if a if a post secondary institution says no we're going to continue to use master's degrees we're only going to use academic credentials and that's it, then, you know, they can still choose to do that under this new proposal. And it does allow other actors who say, you know what we want to have a broader definition of qualified to explore those options and to again come up with their policy. The policy has to be, you know, reasonable as be published, all those things and then it does explicitly say that faculty should be engaged in this process. And so that's why we say again this isn't necessarily a silver bullet this doesn't say you know if they say hey, our institution requires more than 18 minimum graduate hours that could that could the institution could do that. We think in our reading of the policy, it would be really difficult to defend a policy that had more that had higher qualifications for a dual credit instructor than you were holding your standard to your traditional faculty. I think that would be a pretty difficult policy to defend, but they could make those changes to say we require, you know, 20 21 hours of graduate hours that could happen. But in the same in the same lanes that lens that another institution could say, okay, we're we're actually going to recognize fewer than 18 hours, or we're going to recognize that you could teach us courses to base based off of your first work and doing an individual evaluation of your coursework. So it could kind of cut both ways there. Next slide. And then the other really big point and thing that this proposal does is it brings agency guidance and alignment to Illinois. So back in 2022, there was an amendment to the Dual Credit Quality Act, which is Illinois is kind of governing legislation for dual credit programs. And that made a change to professional development plans so professional development plans have been in existence. I think since about 21 2019, I think is when they started. And there is a set of criteria that you can enter into your professional development plan that is that center column, where it says until January of 23. Essentially, you could, those, those are the things that you would have needed to have in order to get a enter into a professional development plan to teach dual credit. And as you can see a lot of those near the current HLC guidance, including those 18 hours. But it did also give a path for bachelor's degrees, teachers with bachelor's degrees to enter into those programs as well. In the amendment in 2022, it eliminated that bachelor's degree provision, particularly because of concerns around HLC. But then it did introduce a new CTE instructor pathway for a PDP. And then you can see that it allows people to get into a professional development program if they have only nine hours, nine graduate hours and discipline to be taught. As you can see, this creates a, this is out of alignment from what the HLC is, is, is guided providing and their guidance. And I think this created a lot of concern and trepidation for, for post secondary institutions for adopting PDPs or allowing PDPs, because they obviously are very obvious reasons they do not want to fall out of have problems with HLC and lose your accreditation status. We have never heard of that opening anywhere. But I think the threat is large enough that I think it did create some concern around post secondary partners around these PDP plans, except for obvious reasons. So now with the new guidance that says that institutions could build a policy that recognizes that these are unqualified for instructors. And so now this is Illinois law. You know, this is something that, you know, is permissible in Illinois and that now colleges will no longer have to be concerned that they're kind of stepping out of alignment with with HLC their accrediting body. That's is good. And next slide. This brings us to our public comment letter. So we created a public comment letter, which I have a link to in the next slide, and it essentially lays out basically what I've just kind of told you guys is it chops up the policy that establishes that these comments are through the lens of dual credit, recognizing that, you know, your institutions if you're coming from a post secondary institution may have much broader concerns and considerations for this policy proposal than dual credit. So that's what this letter comes from and it only looks at this policy through the dual credit lens. Basically do a comparison of what exactly what I just said is that a this will help Illinois expand dual credit amount of missed a teacher shortage, and that be this will create alleviate some concerns that HLC guidance and Illinois law are not in alignment. ICCB system rules to demonstrate that academic credentials and equivalent experience, you know, kind of matches what our current system has in place and those, you know, ICCB system rules are really, really broad, which you guys may know. And it basically just says, you know, the instructor should be educated and prepared in accordance with generally accepted standards and practices. So that's probably the most broad reading of how to how to combine structures. So obviously the agency were new guidance wouldn't run afoul any of those roles there. The next piece that we talked about is progress toward academic credentials. We outlined that Illinois has already had this in place. We're currently in the middle of collecting data on these PDP plans to see how broad, wide spread there you being used, and their success rates and how many, how many completers we have and, you know, if that's been able to expand dual credit and we're kind of in the middle of that process but we have this system built. And it does seem anecdotally we've heard really positive things from the field that this is working and people are adopting these plans. And so we outline how, again, how that alignment would be helpful to Illinois. And then the periodic evaluation of faculty is something that the guidelines call for. And I believe that was that's in current existence as well. But we did want to share some of the some of the language that is taken from the Illinois model partnership agreement, which has a very clear framework for instruct or how you can evaluate instructors and how that and how you can give them and that. And it's something that was agreed to by both secondary and post-secondary actors. And again, kind of creates a framework that this is something that is already working in Illinois. And we obviously, dual credit is only successful if you're maintaining collegiate rigor and making sure the programs are high quality. And we think that we've achieved that in Illinois while embracing these three tenants. Next slide. And this is the promise link. So that link will take you to stands dual credit page and then you'll see an embedded PDF, which you can feel free to edit. You'll see there is no logo on that. And so you can feel free to edit it to use it to, you could send it exactly as is you can edit it you can use as a foundation for writing your own comments again if you're coming from a post secondary institution you might have much broader concerns and considerations for this policy than just dual credit. So you can use our letter how you how you see fit your all comments are due. There's an email just policy comments at hlcecommission.org they're due by September 18. And that was those are pretty much all of their submission guidelines. I know Rodriguez already included some some links to the hlce policy for you to review yourself. I think, you know, with that, you know, we hope to have a strong response from the Illinois dual credit community to support this policy. As I said, you know, this doesn't solve all our problems. You know, there's still a lot of challenges that we have around dual credit and we will continue to have, you know, challenges around faculty credentialing and finding enough teachers. But this is we feel again from stand we feel like this is a a step forward and a step in the right direction. And that will will help smooth out any other wrinkles that we have and dual credit and in I think most importantly is it in Holden's local institutions and and our you know Illinois to make rules that are going to best suit our communities. And I think that was probably one of the most positive things from from this guidance is that it empowers institutions to again to engage in determine what faculty is qualified themselves rather than kind of having them be a middleman I think through some of the in fighting that has happened around dual credit qualifications. And so I can get I think we've got some resources there that all of those are live links so you guys can click on those. But I think at this point are probably open for questions. Yeah, we would like to take any questions that you know would be kind of in the context of helping us. If there's anything we can clarify or any just open comments. Thank you. You know, to Amy's point, one of the things that we've been working on through one of the work groups and teacher credentialing is. And I referenced it earlier but we've been doing some exploration and data collection on the professional development plans. And so we've been talking to community colleges and school districts across the state. We've been analyzing those pps that have been in existence and so we look forward to be able to put together report to those findings and ultimately be able to provide some of the guides of how you may be forward, knowing that potentially speaking come November, HLC is going to be putting on this and approved. There is a clear pathway to be able to practice those PDPs as is laid out in the dual credit quality X so again look, look for additional information for additional resources coming your way through the element between the work through the dual credit think tank. And if you're not a part of the network again we invite you to join us and to be a part of this work. So with that I'm going to open it up to comments if I Patrick I see your hand so if others want to raise your hand I'll call on you or please feel free to use the chat and we'll read those questions out loud. Patrick. Yeah, thanks for redo. So, I'm from Glen bar district seven and new page County, and just like a little 30 thing and brief background. We're the first district offer dual credit English in new page and then at scale and now in line with accelerated placement we have about 1000 students taking dual credit English that are seniors this year. And we also introduced dual credit speech. And we did that whole scale as well because it's a graduation requirement for us for juniors and seniors. Now we were able to expand that at scale and a district with nearly 8000 students because we were able to leverage the 18 credit hours. So our teachers have masters we made a partnership with St Francis we also made a partnership with Eastern we got the 18 credit hours. Boom. That's a part of the HLC language, we got it approved we got our teacher certified expanded the scale. I think this, if I'm just being really honest like this reads like it was created by like community college faculty that wanted to have all the control and be able to restrict things as much as possible. So, and I'm going to point out exactly why. So for the faculty roles and qualifications, all the things that are struck out okay, and then it replaces it with institution establishes and maintains reasonable policies and procedures to determine that faculty are qualified to include academic achievement and academic achievement of academic credentials. Well, then you go to the other document. Well, what is that it says in the context of general education courses, achievement of academic credentials typically means that instructor holds a master's degree or higher. Well, that is the same language as before, but before the language continue to say, if a faculty member holds a master's degree or higher in a discipline of a sub field other than what you're teaching. They should have completed a minimum 18 graduate credit hours in the discipline or subfields in which they teach. So before that was like, that was an hour right so we were able to say okay well they have a master's in teaching master's administration, I can get 18 credit hours that was strategically removed from the language and the achievement of academic credentials. And I could understand like people would sell it like oh yeah, now we can make it so they only have to have fewer graduate hours. And a month ago, I was in a meeting with the psychology department and they wanted a master's degree in psychology to teach psychology 101. And I see this opening the floodgates and I think it's going to actually do the opposite of what you want. And if it's not corrected, it's going to have detrimental effects to dual credit all over the state. And I understand that the people in this room, I, and I understand HLC position, they don't want to be the brokers the arbitrators, but by doing this and putting it up, you're right, you're going to have two classes of community colleges, ones that want to loosen it up now they can loosen it up, and the ones that don't want to loosen it up they can cramp down on it. And believe me, there are many more that want to clamp down on it, then want to loosen it up, and it comes straight from the faculty the faculty have a ton of power in this and everyone here I know would agree with that. So I think I don't know why the 18 credit hours was removed I could understand, you know, I think but I think it has to be corrected. Like, there has to be examples of achievement of academic credentials there's no examples, right, except it says it left in there that they can that they the instructor holds a master's degree or higher in that in that course. And I think that's really detrimental. And if that oversight is not corrected, I think colleges are going to use it to get dual credit out. And I know in other states, weird things have happened. And, and I don't want to see it happen in this state so I think it's got to be corrected either on the HLC side, or there's got to be an amendment to the dual quality credit or dual, you know, the act, we got to amend it to actually reflect that and other things that we need to to adjust so we need a lobby for that so that I know I took too much time explaining that but that's my two cents. Thank you. Here are your comments I mean again this is this is slightly an open forum so obviously you know feel free to talk and it's it's good for those of us who are coordinating and helping support you all in your school district so Brian I see your hand up. I just wanted to echo Patrick's concern. I think it's very legitimate concern. Amy I would encourage you if you're if you're truly trying to look at equity and so forth to to continue to work with flexibility for the high school institutions that are working very hard on dual credit initiatives to be able to seek opportunities with other community colleges if they're local community colleges, making it difficult. But Patrick, I just wanted to say thank you because I think you express what a lot of us are thinking. And I jump in so if you don't 18 credit credit hours they would still be qualified for a PDP plan still could teach under Illinois law. But it doesn't matter if I get a PDP plan with nine credit hours, and then to what end if I have to get a teacher to do nine credit hours to a master's degree, they're not going to do it. If I get a teacher to do nine credit hours, you know to 18 they'll do that. Right in this so this this shuts that and in the dual credit quality act, it doesn't specifically call this out. So the only thing we're called this out specifically was the HLC guidance, and that's what they always lean back on and now we just took that away. So your way. So I don't explain that last point we're 18 to nine. I'm not sure I follow what you were saying there. You go on a PDP. If nine credit hours there they're not going to go finish to get their master's is your is what you're saying. No, no, no, I'm saying generally teachers would that have a master's would go on a PDP when they have nine credit hours, and they would go up to 18, and then they would be approved by the college. Now, it's going to be potentially this is what I would hypothesize would happen since you took 18 away. They're going to say you need a master's degree, because that's what this guidance actually says it says it literally says you need a master's degree or higher in that in that area. So now a PDP starts at nine credit hours. I'm not going to be able to get a teacher I pay for the course is already I'm not going to be able to get a teacher to get a whole nother master's degree. So they could teach a course that's going to be really challenging. I can get them to take six classes. I'm not going to be able to get them to incentivize them to get a whole nother degree when especially when most teachers already have a master's degree. We need some protective language somewhere right this way out and interpret this Patrick is we need some protective language somewhere that basically says at most teachers are required to have 18 credit hours in our graduate level credit hours in that content area at most which would give us the ability if a if a college wanted to make it less than 18 in graduate hours in the in the content area great glory hallelujah. But at most they can require is 18 so your concern Patrick is right that the HLC basically in this change of language is getting rid of the maximum limit that we currently have. Yes, Joshua you said it perfectly that is what's needed. We could I mean Illinois law though would give you more more reason to we would have more room for maneuverability under the proposed policy then we do the current policy though because it basically gives the power back to the states to then decide. But we can't lose the protection of the current language in the interim period is right. Yes, exactly. I just gonna be a wild wild west it'll be chaos if you don't do this while you introduce legislation and adjust that there's it's, you know, I they're gonna be they're chopping at the bit believe me the only reason that's out is because someone knows what that means just like we do. And I will add I think that part of that is there's so many colleges in the state who are going to look at this in different ways that as Patrick said it's going to be the wild wild west if we don't have some more consistency. It could be really challenging and high schools bouncing around to different places and things like that it's. A structure in the language. My K 12 covers 300 square miles parts of four counties and parts of three community college districts so every time that I want to do a dual crest dual credit class I could have kids setting in any one section of a dual credit class that live in up to three community college districts so therefore I get my instructors approved by three community college districts because they could have kids and my college level dual credit course, even right now today I have one community college district on one particular instructor that we heard this year that says she can teach education courses all the education courses that she wants to teach her credentials are good. I have community college district be that says no, she can't teach education courses she's got to be on a PDP plan because we're only going to recognize nine of her credit hours on our graduate transcript and I have a third one that basically says we're going to do whatever community college district a does so basically right it's a it's two to one and I'm going back to community college district being saying how in the world can she be qualified at your two neighboring community college districts and not need a PDP plan, but in your district need a PDP plan, and their response to me is basically well that's them not us and we get to decide. So, even with the existing protections that you're kind of indicating Patrick it is Wild West, if you will, to some degree and to my guess point there. There's not consistency between even the three that I deal with in the same k-12 district. Let me add to I mean the PDP plans I mean there's no there's no hesitancy because we've heard that to that this is again this is a place that's bringing an alignment for PDP plans that how do you how do you have a college that's accepting a PDP plan with HLC explicitly says that that's not permissible. So I hear I hear I hear I hear your concerns. But we could that's something that we could fix with Illinois law, I can't fix the PDP HLC alignment through you know what I mean we can't fix that in HLC through HLC this is our opportunity to bring that alignment there. Whereas in Illinois law, we could change something for 18 credit hours. There's only HLC decided to create we can introduce a law everyone here on this call. You know this is something that we have more control over than we do an HLC policy guidance and so I think that's that's also driving my position to is that this would also empower us to then take back a little bit more controlling in this case to legislate locally rather than being basically behold into HLC because again they could write any policy they want. I think the HLC piece. The HLC piece allowing more flexibility is great. We just have to have the I think to Patrick's point which I had not thought about before this right we just have to be we're going to be very aggressive to have that protection that even though the possibility that HLC as long as great we got to have the protection that somebody stop taking that flexibility and going the other way. Exactly. Before we move forward, I know I'm just looking at the clock, and I want to be respectful everyone's time. I'm wondering, I just want to put it out there if there's any community colleges or anybody from university who wants to share some thoughts. That's a perspective, a different perspective. We would love to have that be part of this conversation. I can't find the hand sorry. Andy, go ahead. Yes, I oversee an academic division at Richland Community College. We do have robust dual credit offerings. We currently are not doing the PDP for the reason that any mentioned earlier that we're not seeing how HLC can permit that in the current guidelines understand there's new guidelines coming so please respect that were that that's the reason why we're not doing that as of yet. I think we're, we're just watching to see what happens come November. We're not opposed to expanding dual credit we have expanded dual credit quite a bit over the years including our largest school district does a full associates degree partly at the high school partly on campus. High school freshman sophomore year here on our campus junior senior year. So, I think from our point of view, we're waiting to see what happens because we. We did not want to be in a spot where we would run a foul of HLC is current guidelines and we saw the dual credit act as written running a foul of that for the reason that the PDP is opposed to that. It's going to be a balance for us and not sure if we can control other community colleges do but for us we have to find that balance of making sure it's equitable and available to all but also not going so far that we're inadvertently shooting ourselves in the foot and taking away future enrollments because we have to have enrollment in order to keep operating as a college and pay the bills so to speak. And for me the biggest issue more than the credentials is that we need to make sure that's the coursework taught at our individual high schools is aligned academically with what is taught on our main campus that we were not running a foul of I guidelines or HLC guidelines or ability of three university partners. Excuse me, that that to me means more than all the things we're talking about today, because I don't mind expanding our dual credit for sure, make sure that we do it academically in the right way. And that statement is not implied there's high schools that are not doing it the right way. I'm not trying to say that people are cheating but admittedly it's harder to know when we have 13 partner high schools, it's difficult to know that is taking place where all of you at the high school probably have the same concern about a teacher that inadvertently is not following guidelines either. It's the same concern that we all have. Thank you very much, Andy. Thank you. Brian. I wanted to call attention to the comment that was made around current technical education which historically for the paraphrase one of my colleagues. The way they put it is kind of had a fence around it in terms of the flexibility, especially in light of so many current tech ed teachers being non traditionally certified coming from business and industry. And in light of the teacher shortage I think we're going to need to continue to view that as a pipeline for us to fill our classrooms. And, you know, I just wanted to mention the comment that was made in the in the sidebar on that particular issue I think it's something that I would certainly like to see the flexibility. We might not see in a, you know, core content transfer class. I'd like to see those provisions in place remain and, and, and frankly I think what we're talking about what I'm hearing on the call is this has been so eloquently demonstrated is inconsistencies. And in terms of how these are interpreted. And, and, you know, having been in a region that had more dual credit than anywhere else in the state and in a region that, you know, it's a kind of a leadership change away or a departmental change away from. I'd love to see something that allowed for more uniform interpretation so. Thank you Brian. Two quick call outs one. Again, not to dismiss what everybody has said but just another resource that we're going to add here at the end of the slide for you for your use. ICCB puts out an annual dual credit report. I encourage you to take a look at that I encourage you to take a look at the ones from previous years in general, we have seen growth in dual credit. It's not the type of growth that we all would like and would prefer, especially with a lot of the work that school districts are doing but also how community colleges continue to extend themselves into the school district to be able to collaborate with career pathways as an example. But it definitely would give you the opportunity to then do a couple of things, one of them being the, the exploration of your own data to be able to, you know, identify what the infrastructure for you looks like I know many of you have done it and we appreciate those every child to share your models and kind of thinking behind some of your processes to specifically to the program assessment. And two would be to be able to, I guess, continue to encourage dialogue and and not so much only just within the community college districts or those school districts that feed into the school of the college, but then from surrounding just more from a regional state or statewide purpose so we have maybe a few more minutes for a couple more comments or questions on James. So I'm new to the community college scene so I'm coming in with naive eyes. So I was just reading through the document that you had sent and I copied in a section that I wanted to ask for clarification on. It says at the bottom so all that stuff that was removed right it was replaced by the idea of reasonable expectations and then it says that the agency will maintain institutional policies and procedures for determining faculty qualifications guidelines to further explain requirements for reasonable policies and procedures in accordance with this assumed practice, which seems to indicate that they've eliminated a lot of stuff but it's really just going somewhere else. There's going to be a document that's forthcoming which will then explain what those expected reasonable guidelines are for the community colleges in setting the criteria for dual credit qualification for dual credit being qualified to teach the community colleges. Is that a correct understanding? So that is, and I can go back to this, what they've drafted is what they're referring to and that's very specific and you just called out. Those are the draft guidelines. And so another piece of feedback for you all working locally is to look at these draft guidelines and compare them to the current guidelines are in place. And so the last thing I'll say to that just to clarify is that these guidelines apply to all faculty all instructors who teach college courses not just dual credit instructors. But that's where you would find that additional context. We do know as we've heard some people already reach out. These draft guidelines as many of you have noted already are fairly vague as it is right now. And it's first draft and so I cannot appreciate how much you guys have shared right now we've been taking a lot of notes. And then but before we go I do want to allow Justin to speak. Justin. Thank you for the opportunity. I got in a little bit late but we've working Woodstock and assistant superintendent we've been on the dual credit journey for the past six, seven years or so. We're fortunate we work with a wonderful community college with McHenry County but I feel like over the course of the last six years we've learned a lot through this process and some of that is having to be fairly simplistic with some of the teacher credentialing. And to Patrick's point and some others that have spoke on here. I feel like there's probably really good intention behind what the goal was, but I think that it's going to really make things a lot less clear for everybody. And it just really gives me great concern as we're looking to provide more equity and access for students that through unintended consequences that this might do exactly the opposite of that and might make it much much more difficult for school districts to partner and create more of a unhealthy relationship is we've worked so hard together, or the course the last six, seven years and I know there's many other school district leaders on this call to that have really, you know, they're going outside of the norm by working with other educational institutions which has really benefited a lot of our students. I'm really concerned that this could put things in the unintended other direction. Thank you, Justin. Well, with that being said, again, thank you so much for joining us. This is being recorded we will make this available through the between network site, where else can be drafting maybe a short blog to kind of summarize a lot of things that were said here. Please reach out, please do become a member of the between network by subscribing to our newsletter if you haven't already, please please reach out to Amy Galvin and stand for children to continue dialogue and finding ways to collaborate. And as I said, the dual credit think specifically is going to continue to work, not only on this to help disseminate information updates but specifically with the teacher credentialing aspect that relates to professional development plan so we look forward to sharing that with you here's coming soon in the fall. And again, thank you so much for joining us. Amy and I will stay back here in case there's a few more additional questions or needs for us to point you in the right direction to find resources or references. Thank you all so much.