Dual Enrollment Strategies in New England 2004-2005

A Forum —December 12, 2005

Dual enrollment is an arrangement allowing high school students to take college courses, often for both secondary and postsecondary credit. In states with long-term dual enrollment programs at no-cost to students, 10% to 30% of juniors and seniors can gain college credit in high school. This briefing explored the potential of dual enrollment programs to increase the number of traditionally underrepresented students who enter postsecondary institutions and earn a degree. Researchers from Jobs for the Future discussed their new report, Head Start on College, which examined innovative dual enrollment programs in New England. The conclusions of the New England report are instructive for other parts of the country.

Jobs for the Future has found that while New England high schools lead the nation in providing advanced placement options for students planning to attend selective colleges, they lag behind other regions in designing approaches to serve lower-income and minority students. Increasing such options will require greater collaboration between secondary and postsecondary institutions as well as policy changes at the state and federal level.

Jobs for the Future

Amy Robins, Senior Project Manager with Jobs for the Future (JFF), said the mission of JFF is to create strategies for economic and educational opportunity for youth and adults struggling in our economy. JFF’s research on youth programs focuses primarily on education, while their research on adult programs explores employment. This work on dual enrollment is at the intersection of high school and post-secondary education and focuses on increasing the number of adults with the skills necessary to compete in today’s economy.

For example, Massachusetts has the highest college completion rate in the country, yet out of 100 9th graders, Robins says:

• 75 will graduate from high school
• 52 will enter college
• 28 will graduate from college within 150% of the normal time.

Robins said the goal of this work is to increase the number of students who graduate from college and address the problem of those who fall out of the pipeline.

Joel Vargas, Senior Project Manager with JFF, said hundreds of thousands of students in forty states are participating in dual enrollment programs. These programs may take on a variety of forms: adjunct professors may teach at the high school, high school students may attend class on a college campus, or the high school itself may be located on a college campus. Vargas believes high schools benefit from dual enrollment programs by having college faculty supplement the high school curriculum while colleges benefit by creating a seamless transition from high school to postsecondary without the need for remedial work. Students who participate in dual enrollment programs are exposed earlier to the academic and social expectations of college. “It’s a motivator,” said Vargas. “It breaks down the mystique of what college is, making high school more relevant and college a more tangible goal.”

In the last two to three years, Vargas said policy makers and education leaders have seen dual enrollment programs as a potential lever to improve college access for underrepresented students and improve the rigor of high schools. JFF is especially interested in programs that:  

• target low-income families who would not normally see college as an option,
• offer a cohesive curriculum that can result in college credit,
• provide extra support to help students become college ready (e.g., literacy training across the curriculum, intense tutoring or mentoring), and
• offer the potential for collaboration between high school and college faculty.

“We need more research in the field as we try to determine the effects of these programs,” said Vargas. One question that needs to be asked is how many students in dual enrollment programs may still need remedial classes in college. Vargas said no one has collected that information yet.

Head Start on College: The New England Experience

Several programs in the six New England states are featured in the JFF report and are briefly described below. Robins explained that of the New England states, Massachusetts had been the only state which officially supported dual enrollment programs by providing a mechanism for counting credit from college courses as credit toward high school graduation along with some limited state funding reimbursing postsecondary institutions for enrolling high school juniors and seniors. However, the Massachusetts initiative has not been funded for the past two years. Currently, Massachusetts has a variety of very small programs, but is considering re-funding dual enrollment with a set-aside for programs serving disadvantaged and underrepresented youth.

In New Hampshire and Connecticut, dual enrollment strategies operate primarily through the community college system. In New Hampshire’s Running Start program, high school teachers earn associate professor status at their local community college. They teach college-level classes generated by student interest in their high schools. Initially, the classes targeted gifted students who needed more rigorous challenges. The program is now working with students interested in technical education.

Connecticut’s Tech Prep program involves partnerships between the local education agency and ten technical colleges. The goal is to have students leave high school with an associate degree in a technical field.

Maine has a goal of increasing the number of students with postsecondary credentials by 40,000 in 20 years. Education leaders are looking at a competency-based high school diploma that requires specific skills rather than a certain number of credits. Students would be able to take classes at their local community college to prepare for the high school assessments. Robins believes “Maine will be an interesting state to watch.”

Rhode Island’s City Campus Program links the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) to three alternative public high schools. High school students choose among business, health care, or another professional track for coursework at CCRI. There is a close partnership between high school teachers and college professors as basic skills are emphasized across the curriculum. Students who are unable to pass the college-level coursework receive a certificate of completion without any postsecondary credit. “This is dual enrollment at its best,” says Robins, “It cultivates teachers, draws on the experience of college faculty, and focuses on inner city kids who would end up otherwise in developmental classes.”

College students in Vermont have been required to take a general college studies class; Vermont is working to have more students take that class in high school. This college level class is being marketed to adult education programs and corrections facilities to get new populations to think about college.

Overall, Robins concluded that with the exception of New Hampshire and Connecticut, most dual enrollment programs in New England are small and fairly isolated. There are many new programs, but limited information on outcomes. Funding is a constant concern as most New England states do not have state funding for dual enrollment. The most successful programs are driven by someone at the local level who cares passionately about making the program happen.

Robins believes education leaders and policymakers need to think creatively about ways to cut college costs, with dual enrollment programs as one means to that end. The overarching question, she concludes, is “how more people can access college credentials if we have determined that such credentials are critical to long term success in this country.”

Federal Policy Implications

Joel Vargas says dual enrollment activities could be permitted or even given privileged status under existing federal programs with a similar purpose, such as TRIO, Gear Up, or Tech Prep. He said it is also not always clear when dual enrollment programs might qualify for funding or status under existing legislation.

Dual enrollment programs are usually driven and promoted by states. Federal policies could encourage states to adjust their dual enrollment programs to serve a broader range of students. States control many features of dual enrollment programs such as whether college credits count toward high school graduation requirements and who is eligible for dual enrollment. In many cases, students need a minimum combined SAT score to take any dual enrollment course, even though some students could be capable of doing college-level work in one subject, like English, but not in other classes, like math.

Federal and state policy could encourage high school-college partnerships that create a coherent curriculum aligned with college-ready standards. These partnerships need the flexibility to discuss and design what works for students. Currently, for example, Vargas says many programs put high schools in competition with colleges for students and funding. Funding and incentives should encourage partnerships that promote student progression through the pipeline rather than penalizing high schools when students choose to take college courses.

Federal policies could also use dual enrollment programs as a laboratory for testing larger policy ideas and identifying ways to achieve greater efficiency or better outcomes from existing federal programs. “There is a lot of inefficiency,” suggests Vargas, “in federal aid that goes to high school students who enter college, take remedial courses, and drop out.” Vargas suggested providing federal financial aid to high school students in dual enrollment programs where they are in a supported environment and have a greater chance of success.

An attendee wondered if high schools are so broken that “we are reaching out to colleges to do what high schools are not doing, rather than fixing the high schools.”  Vargas said that dilemma brings the alignment issue front and center because state standards and assessments are often not aligned with first-year college expectations. Indeed, Vargas said, it could be argued that dual enrollment helps address the paradoxical problem in many communities where “senior year is wasted and students show up at community college where they need to take remedial courses.”

Robins pointed to some interesting program models that are building teacher capacity on both sides: preparing college faculty to work with a new, younger population and preparing high school teachers to more effectively prepare students for college. “These partnerships,” said Robins, “can be really meaningful and effect real change.”

Resources

Head Start on College – full report

http://www.jff.org/jff/kc/library/0259

Jobs for the Future

http://www.jff.org

TRIO

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html

Gear Up

http://www.ed.gov/programs/gearup/index.html

TechPrep

http://www.ed.gov/programs/techprep/index.html

Running Start – New Hampshire

http://www.nhctc.edu/prs/

TechPrep – Connecticut

http://www.state.ct.us/sde/deps/Career/TechPrep/

Presenters

Amy Robins, Senior Project Manager, is a member of Jobs for the Future's Building Economic Opportunity Group and leads JFF's adult literacy efforts and develops and disseminates accelerated advancement models for low-wage adults. She is a co-author of three JFF publications, Rising to the Literacy Challenge: Building Adult Education Systems in New England, Creating Pathways to Advancement: A Manual for Project Developers, and Head Start on College: Dual Enrollment Strategies in New England 2004-2005.

Prior to joining Jobs for the Future in 2000, Ms. Robins worked on developing, implementing, and managing a $15 million Welfare-to-Work program at the Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council. She served as a member of the Council's management team during the implementation of the Workforce Investment Act. As a graduate research assistant at the Fiscal Policy Center at the University of Washington, Ms. Robins researched and co-wrote a report, Fixing to Change: A Best Practice Assessment of One-Stop Centers Working with Welfare Recipients.

During the Clinton Administration, Ms. Robins served as an assistant to the Director of the Women's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor, where she helped raise the profile of women's work issues. She also has five years experience working for the U.S. Congress as a legislative aide. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Ms. Robins earned an M.P.A. degree from the Evans School of Public Policy at the University of Washington.

Joel Vargas, Senior Project Manager, works with the Early College High School Initiative, examining the district and state policy implications related to the initiative and exploring how state and federal policies can improve the postsecondary attainment of underserved students.

He has directed, initiated, and studied a variety of middle school and high school programs designed to promote college going for underrepresented students. He also has been a middle school teacher and an editor and research assistant for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Vargas is co-editor of the 2004 book, Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth edited by Richard Kazis, Joel Vargas, and Nancy Hoffman and published by Harvard Education Press. He was recently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education as one of “Higher Education's Next Generation of Thinkers.”

Mr. Vargas received a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University, and earned his Ed.D. from Harvard University.

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