DES MOINES, IOWA—Iowa dual-enrolled home school students are now eligible for a program through which high school students may take college courses for high school credit at no personal cost. Public school students have been eligible for several years.

The administrative decision in favor of home school students was handed down Dec. 7 by an Iowa Department of Education hearing panel. Under the Postsecondary Enrollment Options Act, dual-enrolled students may now take appropriate college courses for no personal charge.

Dual-enrolled students are those doing most of their work at a private school, or in a home school, but who also do course work at a local public high school. Under the act, high school students may take college courses for high school credit if no academically equivalent course is available at their current school.

Meggan Stone, the Des Moines home schooler who precipitated the decision, won’t be reimbursed for courses she took at her own expense. But the ruling makes it clear that dual-enrolled home schoolers who apply to the program in the future will be eligible to take college courses at no cost to them.

Stone was required to pay for college courses in Human Biology and Music Appreciation when the Ankeny Community School District followed an opinion from the Iowa Attorney General regarding the act. The opinion, Declaratory Ruling #44, said that under the Postsecondary Enrollment Options Act, dual-enrolled home school students were not eligible for the program.