In February, Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation expanding Running Start, the state program begun in 1993 to allow junior and senior high school students to enroll in community and technical colleges, like Wenatchee Valley College (WVC), to earn credits toward both their high school and an associate’s degree, without paying tuition. The so-called “Walking Start to Running Start” bill, sponsored by State Senator Brad Hawkins who represents Washington’s 12th District, which includes Chelan County, allows rising juniors to enroll in Running Start in the summer prior to their junior year.
While seemingly a minor accretion of the program with the intention of allowing those rising juniors to get their feet wet, it will almost certainly end up adding to the ever-increasing number of students abandoning the traditional high school campus for the alternative experience. And, while often hailed as a beacon of innovative educational offerings for motivated high school students, a persistent cloud of inequity and harm to the high schools left behind hangs over the program.
When Running Start students leave their high school, they take with them almost all of their state funding. Running Start does not have its own appropriation. The money follows the student.
For full-time Running Start students, the school district can keep a mere seven percent of the funding for administrative purposes, while the community college receives the remaining ninety-three percent.
Almost one quarter of this year’s CHS senior and junior classes have abandoned the Leavenworth campus for WVC. The effects are profound. An article that ran in the April 23, 2024 edition of The Leavenworth Echo and this month’s edition of the Kodiak Chronicle, reported, and Cascade School District Superintendent Tracey Edou affirmed, that Running Start is one of the substantive factors responsible for the district’s budget shortfalls and resulting cuts in the 2024-25 school year.
While those shortfalls will have no effect on Running Start students, it will deeply affect the students at CHS. In addition to district service cutbacks that will put a strain on the school, it is losing its choral department, one math and one English teaching position. In a high school of its size, these cuts are considerable. CHS already has limited curriculum offerings. Now, even fewer courses will be offered, as there are fewer teachers to teach them.
The majority of students who choose to stay at CHS, or cannot afford to go to Running Start, are being forced into a downward academic offerings spiral. Not long ago, even before the announcement of budget cuts, CHS eliminated from its curriculum Central Washington University Physics, Biotechnology, and AP Chemistry. With the loss of teaching positions, the loss of courses will continue. (CHS has yet to publish its curriculum offerings for the next school year as it struggles to form a schedule amidst budget cuts.)
The burden of Running Start is not limited to the classroom. While CHS Running Start students take their classes at WVC, they are still free to participate in CHS sports and extracurriculars, sit in on high school classes, make use of high school counseling, and participate in other CHS funded experiences. If state monies for these students are going to WVC, where do the funds come from to ensure that Running Start students can participate in these activities? That is right, from the budgets of students who remain at CHS, forcing them to further shoulder the costs of Running Start students while watering down their own experience and opportunities.
Other problems with the Running Start program include access and equity. Large gaps in participation by gender, race/ethnicity, and income exist. According to the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, male students, students of color, and low-income students are about half as likely to participate in Running Start as students in other demographics. And while 46% of all students in Washington qualify for free or reduced lunch, only 28% of Running Start participants qualify. Although tuition is covered, many costs like transportation and textbooks are not. Couple that with intangibles such a lack of parental support, the program is shown to be unavailable to students in need, exacerbating socioeconomic disparities.
In addition, one often overlooked consequence of the program for students enrolled in it is the matter of credit transfers and college admissions. Most Running Start students leave high school not because those schools do not offer a solid education; they leave for free college credits. However, according to the Washington Student Achievement Council, those credits, while usually transferable within the University of Washington system, a key player in the development of Running Start, are rarely transferable to out-of-state colleges and universities, particularly those with a competitive admissions process. Most such schools will not accept transfer credits from community colleges. For college-bound seniors looking to attend a well-regarded university outside of Washington State, Running Start can feel like a broken promise.
The time has come to acknowledge the inequities and problems endemic to Running Start.
The time has come to acknowledge the inequities and problems endemic to Running Start. When a core group of mid-level students, who often both set behavior and academic standards for high schools, leave those campuses, it changes the very makeup of the school. Who is left? The highest achieving students, who at schools like CHS segregate into “college-in-the-class room” and like offerings, and the lower, more poorly achieving students. The mid-level core of schools is simply being hollowed out by Running Start.
Students remaining, by choice or necessity, are being forced to carry the financial burdens of those mid-level students in a program that is a key factor in budget woes, and is destroying the economic, social, and educational fabric of Washington’s high schools. Balancing the benefits for individual students with the impact on high schools is essential for an equitable education system. It is time to walk back Running Start and put an end to the program.