Education Commission of the States has researched dual/concurrent enrollment policies in all states to provide this comprehensive resource. Click on the questions below for 50-state comparisons showing how all states approach specific dual/concurrent enrollment policies. Or, choose to view a specific state’s approach by going to the individual state profiles page.
Key Takeaways
50-State Comparisons
Program basics
Access
Finance
Ensuring program quality
Transferability
Related Resources
PUBLISHED: March 25, 2016
RESOURCE TYPE:50-State Comparison
EDUCATION LEVEL:High School, Postsecondary
STATE(S):Nationwide
Deep Dive
State policy and dual-credit program limitations make it difficult for students from underserved backgrounds to access the opportunity.
Federal data show dual enrollment — a process allowing high school students to take college-level courses for postsecondary credit — is gaining steam within the education sector.
Between the 2002–03 and 2010–11 academic years, the number of students taking college-level courses within a dual-enrollment program increased 80% to 1.2 million, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. States are following the trend. For example, Illinois passed a law this month that will allow students to take an unlimited number of dual-credit classes.
For many in the industry, dual-enrollment practices look great on paper, offering a jump-start on an advanced education. Yet critics question whether this opportunity is truly accessible and therefore effective. Does dual enrollment actually lead to more college-going for all kinds of students or just some? And what can institutions to do help close the achievement gap?
Dual credit correlates to college-going behavior
Dual enrollment's goal of giving talented students a taste of college life and a jump-start on furthering their education and career is a key reason for its popularity, said Elisabeth Barnett, senior research scientist at the Community College Research Center.
'If students take dual enrollment, they are more likely to finish high school and persist in college,' Barnett said. 'There's also a fair amount of conversation going on about how dual credit might help more students who could be on the fence come out of high school more prepared or likely to go to college.'
Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show that in the fall of 2010, 15% of U.S. community college entrants were high school dual-enrollment students. The figure comes from the research group's 2017 report on how students taking such courses fare after secondary school, tracking more than 200,000 high school students from 2010 to 2016.
The report found that only 12% of those dually enrolled high school students didn't go on to enroll in some form of college by the age of 20, with 41% of dually enrolled students going on to a four-year college. Of the other 47% of students who first matriculated in community college between the ages of 18 and 20, 84 percent went to the institution where they were taking the dual enrollment courses.
Those figures suggest time in the postsecondary classroom can lead to more college-going behavior, said Jason Taylor, assistant professor of education leadership and policy at the University of Utah.
'We know that a significant portion of colleges' overall full-time enrollment is from high school students,' Taylor said. 'From that perspective, I do think we see the numbers increasing. My assumption is that many colleges see dual enrollment as a viable strategy for getting more students to college.'
However, there's a catch
While studies show students enrolled in dual-credit courses tend to go on to postsecondary education, access to those classes may not be available to everyone. After all, when dual enrollment was first introduced, it wasn't intended to be, Taylor said.
'Dual enrollment emerged as sort of a pathway for higher achieving students — a way to provide more challenging courses for students who might be college bound or students who are already high achieving,' he said.
This often means lower-income students of color and first-generation students are less likely to participate in significant numbers. 'In some ways, dual enrollment is where we see inequities in participation,' he said.
A 2017 federal study on dual credit in Oregon’s public colleges came to a similar conclusion. It found that students in dual-credit programs at community colleges 'are more likely to be white, female, high achievers, and not economically disadvantaged.' Across all socioeconomic groups, students who were eligible for free and reduced school lunches were less likely to take dual credit courses.
The results break down by race, too. Of about 135,800 students in this category, only 12.4% of black students enrolled, compared to 22.9% of whites and 29.9% of Asians between the 2005–06 and 2012–13 academic years.
A study of dual-credit programs in Texas, where state law requires districts to offer dual-credit opportunities, came to a similar conclusion. The 2017 interim report from the Rand Corp. analyzed outcomes data from these programs between 2000 and 2015, finding that participation rates for students eligible for free and reduced lunches peaked at 18% in 2011, compared to 27% for non-eligible students. By 2015 those shares had fallen slightly to 13% and 23%, respectively.
'Dual enrollment emerged as sort of a pathway for higher achieving students — a way to provide more challenging courses for students who might be college bound or students who are already high achieving.'
Jason Taylor
Assistant professor of education leadership and policy, University of Utah
In many states, there's already a recognition among industry stakeholders of how unequal dual enrollment can be, said Adam Lowe, executive director of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP). He said steps are being taken to make the opportunity more accessible at the K–12 level, but without greater attention, the achievement gap between wealthier and less well-off students is likely to grow, continuing the demographic imbalance in dual-enrollment programs.
'The challenge is making sure we harness what we know to be a good program to further our societal goals around postsecondary education, which includes reducing attaining gaps,' he said, noting that NACEP adopted a mission statement saying all students should have access to dual-credit college courses.
There's work to be done with this, he said, 'but if you look around the country, we've got places like Indiana where more and more students are taking at least one college-level course. Now, we're clearly not talking about just the top 5% of students. But that's not the case for every location.'
He mentioned Mississippi, where there are no state policies in support of dual enrollment. The cost of taking college-level classes without financial aid, he explained, is just one way the opportunity can lead to achievement gaps.
'That's why it takes a real intentionality to design programs that all students can benefit from,' Lowe said, citing Indiana, where students eligible for free and reduced lunches can take dual-credit courses for free and costs are reduced for moderate-income students at public schools.
What's the role of colleges in dual enrollment?
Dual-enrollment policies are highly dependent on individual state practices and how K–12 districts operate. But institutions still have a major stake in how these programs are run, Lowe said. For one, these programs are part of the larger mission institutions have to provide education to the community around them. There's also a business case.
'State policies have a significant impact, so why would an institution try to invest in and contribute to these programs? States like Indiana are offsetting the costs for colleges, but it's not a full-tuition reimbursement,' Lowe said. 'But, the small incentive is enough of a reason to invest. Success in dual enrollment is demonstrative of college and career readiness, and creates a new way to look at academic success and access beyond evaluation of ACT and SAT scores. You're building out a pipeline.'
Institution leaders can help make these programs more effective at attracting students from more diverse, underserved backgrounds, Barnett said. For instance, leaders need to make sure they are forming solid partnerships between their institutions and feeder high schools. They also can come up with a range of options that give different students a way in, looking for those supports while they are there, she added.
'For example, institutions can provide a 101 class that can be accessed by a wider range of students,' Barnett said 'Sometimes it's things like study skills, note taking, time management, understanding the expectations of college students or understanding your own future directions and desires that can help students get to these opportunities.'
Expanding the understanding of what constitutes a college-level class could also help make dual-credit courses appealing to more kinds of students, Lowe said. For instance, dual enrollment could be extended to career and technical courses for professions spanning healthcare to emerging fields in technology.
'If you’ve got a strong partnership between secondary and postsecondary in career and technical courses, it's going to propel a much wider range of students beyond the high school level,' Lowe said.
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Many conversations in Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee meeting on the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act focused on dual or concurrent enrollment. Concurrent enrollment was also in the news in the past few years when The Higher Learning Commission clarified that instructors of dual-credit courses (within the HLC’s region) are required to have at least a master’s degree in their teaching area, or at least 18 graduate level credit hours within the related specialty.
After covering this hearing and discussing this news story, WCET Frontiers determined that we should explore current trends in concurrent enrollment and report to our subscribers. Today, we’ll review what concurrent enrollment is, the benefits and pros of such program, and who is “doing’ concurrent enrollment in the United States. Next time we’ll look at some best practices in concurrent enrollment and current or future trends in this area.
Thank you to the experts who assisted me with developing these posts. They are cited in the content below.
What is Dual or Concurrent Enrollment?
Concurrent and dual enrollment partnerships provide high school students the opportunity to take college credit-bearing courses. The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) defines concurrent enrollment as the subset of dual enrollment courses taught by college-approved high school teachers (NACEP, 2018). I was thrilled to be able to chat with Adam Lowe, the Executive Director of NACEP about many of the topics in today’s blog.
The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) defines “dual enrollment” as “an organized system with special guidelines that allows high school students to take college-level courses. The guidelines might have to do with entrance or eligibility requirements, funding, limits on course-taking, and so on. This includes early and middle college high schools as well as other types of dual enrollment programs” (Marken, Gray, and Lewis, 2013).
Sometimes called “dual credit,” “dual enrollment,” “college in the high school,” or “early college,” concurrent enrollment differs from other models of dual enrollment because high school instructors teach the college courses (NACEP, 2018).
For ease of reading this post, I will refer to the courses in general as “dual enrollment,” unless I specifically understood that the courses being discussed were taught by high school instructors (which would be referred to as “concurrent enrollment”).
Effectiveness
Cynthia Grua, from the Office of the Commissioner for Higher Education for the Utah System of Higher Education, spoke with me about Utah’s Concurrent Enrollment programs, which were first started in the late 1980s. Utah’s programs are focused on general education coursework and saving money for students. Current Utah dual enrollment courses cost each student $5.00 per credit (so $15 for a three-credit class). Utah college courses cost between $450 and $1600 for the same courses on a college campus. The courses are subsidized with funding from state government and support from colleges, school districts, and charter schools. This means that students who took Utah Concurrent Enrollment courses saved $34.9 million in tuition last year (Step Up Utah, 2018).
Recent studies have shown that concurrent and dual enrollment programs have positive effects on college degree attainment, credit accumulation, high school achievement, overall academic achievement, and college readiness (IES, 2017). Further research into the effect on certain populations of students has shown smaller effect sizes for low-income students and students of color, when compared with other student groups (Taylor, 2015).
Who’s doing it?
In the 2010-2011 school year, more than 1.4 million high school students took courses offered by a college or university for credit through dual enrollment. The courses are growing. From 2002 to 2010, dual enrollment had an annual growth rate of more than 7% (I would assume this has continued or increased since then) (Marken, et. al, 2013).
The NACEP says that from 2010-2011, 1.4 million high school students took more than 2 million college courses from postsecondary institutions. Since the last NCES report on this information, more than 3,000 high schools have partnered with higher education institutions to offer these types of courses (NACEP, 2018).
In the 2010-11 school year (the last year NCES reported on dual or concurrent enrollment), 53% of participating U.S. institutions reported high school students took courses for college credit (46% through dual enrollment, 28% outside of dual enrollment programming). At that time, most courses were taught by both a high school and college instructor (45%), while 34% were taught by high school instructors only, and 21% were taught by college instructors. Most take college courses at their own high school, though this varies between programs, schools, and states (NACEP, 2018). Cynthia advised that in Utah, having the classes at the high schools solves scheduling problems created by public school bell schedules. In rural Utah, generally, students must give up two class periods if they were going to take a course delivered at a college campus.
Pros/Benefits
I have found several benefits or pros for these types of courses:
Possible Cons
My review has also found a few issues with these types of courses:
The Heart of the Issue
One of the main motivations for the state of Utah in their Concurrent Enrollment programs is increasing access to quality education for low-income, under-represented, or rural students. Especially students who would never have considered college as an option. My colleague, Sherri Artz Gilbert, attended an ITC Network session on dual enrollment. She reflected that when her niece and nephew talked about these classes, she didn’t really think about the implications of such courses. But, after the ITC session, she understood how life changing dual enrollment courses can be. Especially for low-income, rural students who would “never ever consider college an option before that opportunity.” The classes, set in their own high school and taught by supportive, quality teachers, not only provided a cost-effective course, a head start on college credits earned, but also showed them that they would be successful college students. And, by the way, Sherri’s niece is close to completing her college degree and her nephew starts college this fall.
As Cynthia told me at the end of our interview: these programs should focus on serving students. That’s the heart of the issue.
Next time in our blog series on dual enrollment we’ll explore some best practices, talk about how technology impacts these courses, ways these courses may be addressed in upcoming (someday) Higher Education Act legislation, and consider the future of dual enrollment.
Lindsey Downs Manager, Communications WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies [email protected] References
“Concurrent Enrollment.” Accessed 2018. Colorado Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www.cde.state.co.us/postsecondary/concurrentenrollment
“Concurrent Enrollment” (2018). Step Up Utah. Retrieved February 2018 from https://stepuputah.com/program/concurrent-enrollment/
NACEP, 2018. Fast Facts about Dual and Concurrent Enrollment. National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. Retrieved February 2018 from http://www.nacep.org/research-policy/fast-facts/
Fink, J., Jenkins, D., and Yanagiura, T. (September 2017). What Happens to Students Who Take Community College “Dual Enrollment” Courses in High School? Community College Research Center. Retrieved from https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/what-happens-community-college-dual-enrollment-students.pdf
Institute of Education Sciences. (February 2017). What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report, Dual Enrollment Programs. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/InterventionReports/wwc_dual_enrollment_022817.pdf
Dual Enrollment Nces Statistics Chart
Marken, S., Gray, L., and Lewis, L. (2013). Dual Enrollment Programs and Courses for High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2010–11 (NCES 2013- 002). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 2/26/18 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch
Meador, Derrick. (2017, March 18). What is Concurrent Enrollment? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-concurrent-enrollment-319425.
Taylor, Jason. (2015, July 17). Accelerating Pathways to College, the (In)Equitable Effects of Communication College Dual Credit. Community College Review. Col 43, Issue 4, pp. 355-379. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0091552115594880
Purnell, R. (2014). A guide to launching and expanding dual enrollment programs for historically underserved students in California. Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges. https://www.asundergrad.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/DualEnrollmentGuideJune2014.pdf
There are more high school students taking courses for credit from Tompkins Cortland Community College (TCCC) in upstate New York than there are students at the college itself.
Some 3,200 full- and part-time students are enrolled in more than 50 degree and certificate programs at TCCC. But more than 5,100 high school students from 60 K-12 school systems — some as far as three hours away — take TCCC courses at their local high schools through a dual-enrollment program called CollegeNow, one of the oldest such programs in the state.
The program helps provide a “seamless transition” from high school to college, says Victoria Zeppelin, director of CollegeNow.
As students simultaneously earn high school and college credit, they’re getting a jump on their college experience, which can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes them to earn a degree. In fact, “we had 31 students graduate from high school last year with an associate degree from the college,” Zeppelin said.
Growth area
CollegeNow is a striking example of how popular dual-enrollment programs have become. During the 2010-11 academic year, more than 1.2 million U.S. high school students took courses for college credit within a dual-enrollment program, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — and experts say that number has continued to climb.
Dual Enrollment Nces Statistics Free
“As states look at how to move the needle on college enrollment and completion, dual enrollment is a strategy that has been proven to work,” says Adam Lowe, executive director of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. “If students come to college with credits under their belt, that often gives them the momentum they need to succeed.”
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Successful dual enrollment programs begin with strong, collaborative partnerships between community colleges and their local K-12 school systems, says Daniel Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. They also require clearly articulated agreements that spell out what each entity’s responsibilities.
This excerpt comes from the current issue of the Community College Journal, which has been published by the American Association of Community Colleges since 1930.
For example: Who’s going to teach the courses? Will the instruction take place at the high school or at the community college? What courses will be offered for dual enrollment, and what credit will be given? How will the costs be shared? Will the students have to pay tuition—and if so, at what rate?
When these arrangements are worked out satisfactorily, “then everybody benefits,” Domenech says. “But the devil is in the details.”
Who teaches the courses
Dual-enrollment programs can take many forms. TCCC mainly offers a “concurrent enrollment” model, in which high school students can take college-level courses in their own school, taught by high school faculty. These instructors become adjunct faculty for the college, and they must go through a rigorous process to ensure their course meets the college’s high standards.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
“The instructors have to submit their credentials, and we have faculty assigned in every discipline to review those credentials,” Zeppelin says. “Once an instructor is approved as an adjunct, he or she must attend training. We share the expectations for the course, and the instructors send us their course syllabus for approval. We have to see what it is they plan to teach and whether it aligns with the learning outcomes we expect.”
Offering dual-enrollment courses in the high schools provides greater access for students, because they don’t have to travel to campus.
“Transportation can be a significant barrier, especially in rural settings,” Lowe says. It also alleviates concerns about whether high school students are socially or emotionally ready to learn in a campus environment.
On the other hand, being on a college campus exposes high school students to a more authentic college experience. What’s more, many high schools lack instructors who are qualified to teach a college-level course.
Sampling college
At Snead State Community College (SSCC) in Boaz, Alabama, about 200 to 250 students from 21 area high schools receive dual-enrollment credit each year. At nine of those schools, students take the courses within their own school, while students attending the others travel to the Boaz campus to take courses taught by college faculty.
Dual-enrollment courses are “an opportunity to introduce college to a population who wouldn’t normally think about it,” President Robert Exley says. “Students get access to our Academic Success Center, which provides tutoring and early alerts, and they are encouraged to take part in campus activities. Our goal is to have them see themselves as a normal college student.”
Read the full article in Community College Journal online.
Less than 6 percent of African American students and 10 percent of Latino students earned high school credit in calculus by the time they graduated in 2013
New data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the U.S. Department of Education reveals some startling discrepancies in the rates at which students from low-income families and students of color complete advanced-level math and science courses in high school.
Among students who were ninth graders in 2009, less than 6 percent of African American students and 10 percent of Latino students earned high school credit in calculus by the time they graduated in 2013, according to NCES. By contrast, more than 18 percent of white students and nearly 45 percent of Asian students completed the highest level math course. Similarly, only 6 percent of students in the lowest socioeconomic status quintile completed calculus during their high school years, compared to more than 31 percent of students in the highest quintile.
The findings are part of the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) 2013 Update and High School Transcript Study: A First Look at Fall 2009 Ninth-Graders in 2013.The study tracks a nationally representative sample of public, charter, and private school students who were ninth graders in fall 2009 and focuses on students’ progression through high school and into postsecondary education and employment, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The study surveyed students during their freshman year of high school and then again during the spring of their junior year. This most recent report includes data collected during the summer and fall of 2013, the period immediately following the cohort’s scheduled on-time graduation. High school graduation rates for the entire cohort and different subgroups of students within the cohort appear in the table below.
In addition to completing calculus at lower rates, African American students in the 2009 cohort were less likely to earn high school credits in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, according to HSLS:09. Students who complete AP and IB courses in high school often earn college credit for their work as well, giving them an advantage toward completing their college degrees. While 23 percent of African American students earned some high school credits in AP or IB courses, only about 6 percent of African American students earned those credits in AP or IB math, while less than 8 percent earned those credits in AP or IB science courses. Latino students, meanwhile, had marginally higher rates; almost 34 percent of Latino students earned AP or IB credits, with almost 12 percent earning credits in math and 10 percent earning credits in science. By comparison, 72 percent of Asian students earned AP or IB credits during high school, with nearly 46 percent earning credits in math and 40 percent earning credits in science. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of white students earned AP or IB credits, with about 16 percent earning those credits in math or science.
Students from low-income families also completed AP and IB courses at lower rates, according to HSLS:09. Less than one-quarter of students in the lowest socioeconomic quintile earned AP or IB credits during high school and only about 6 percent earned those credits in either math or science. Meanwhile, 62 percent of students in the highest socioeconomic quintile earned AP or IB credits, with about 30 percent earning those credits in math or science.
These discrepancies are not entirely surprising considering that high schools with the highest concentrations of students living in poverty offer fewer advanced-level math and science courses, according to a study conducted by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). The CLASP study finds that only 41 percent of high-poverty high schools offer calculus, compared to 85 percent of low-poverty high schools—those where fewer than 25 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Such schools also predominantly and disproportionately serve students of color.
The Alliance for Excellent Education found similar trends when looking at the availability of rigorous courses in schools serving high concentrations of students of color. Tales of vesperia pc port. For example, among high schools with the highest enrollment of African American and Latino students, only 40 percent offered physics and 29 percent offered calculus, compared to 66 percent and 55 percent, respectively, of schools with the lowest enrollment of these students.
Furthermore, among the 2009 student cohort, African American students were less likely to earn high school credits through dual-enrollment options, programs in which students earn high school and college credits simultaneously for a course or series of courses, according to HSLS:09. Only 5 percent of African American students and 7 percent of Latino students earned dual-enrollment credits during high school, compared to 11 percent of Asian students and nearly 12 percent of white students.
Meanwhile, students in the highest socioeconomic quintile were nearly three times more likely to complete dual-enrollment courses in high school than students in the lowest socioeconomic quintile, according to HSLS:09. Although states are expanding the availability of dual-enrollment options, many state and local funding structures still require students and their families to pay all or part of the tuition costs associated with dual-enrollment courses, creating financial barriers that prevent students from low-income families and students of color from participating in such programs, according to an analysis by the Education Commission of the States (ECS). This disparity in program participation puts students with the greatest needs at a distinct disadvantage since research shows that students who participate in dual-enrollment course work are more likely to graduate from high school, enter college, and complete college in less time than peers with similar high school academic performance and demographics.
High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) 2013 Update and High School Transcript Study: A First Look at Fall 2009 Ninth-Graders in 2013 is available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2015037.
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