Dual Enrollment: A Strategy for Improving College Readiness and Success for All Students

 

A Forum held in partnership with the National Center for Postsecondary Research

— Friday, February 10, 2012

 

AYPF is pleased to announce that the event video for this event is now available to view here on our website! Click the link below to begin watching!

Click here to view the event video!

 

Overview

Increasingly dual enrollment is becoming a strategy to encourage and support more students into postsecondary education and beyond.  Yet, the research is only beginning to allow us to understand the long-term impacts on student success as well as the ideal design elements. This forum reviewed the range of research conducted by the National Center for Postsecondary Research, as well as discuss ways that dual enrollment has been/can be used as a strategy to promote college and career readiness for all students.

Following an overview of the research (see below), our panelists described how dual enrollment has been used as a strategy in both the state and national context to support efforts to ensure all students are college- and career-ready.

Click here to view the Presenter Biographies for this forum

 

Researchers from the National Center for Postsecondary Research discussed the following research studies:

Determinants of Students’ Success: The Role of Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment Programs

Using data from two cohorts of all high school students in Florida and controlling for schools' and students' characteristics, this study examines the relative power of Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment (DE) in predicting students' college access and success. The study finds that both AP and DE are strongly associated with positive outcomes, but the enrollment outcomes are not the same for both programs. DE students are more likely than AP students to go to college after high school, but they are less likely to first enroll in a four-year college. Despite this difference in initial enrollment, the difference between DE and AP in terms of bachelor's degree attainment is much smaller and not statistically significant for some model specifications. In addition, the effect of DE is driven by courses taken at the local community college campus; there is no effect for DE courses taken at the high school.

 

High School Dual Enrollment Programs: Are We Fast-Tracking Students Too Fast?

 

Dual enrollment (DE), an arrangement by which high school students take college courses, is becoming increasingly popular as a means of improving high school education. However, there is little rigorous evidence on its impact on student outcomes. This working paper represents the first attempt to gauge the effect of DE on the likelihood of high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion among students who are on the edge of eligibility for participation in DE. In two separate analyses, the paper examines the effects of taking an academic DE course in any subject and the effects of taking a DE course in college algebra. While the former appears to have no significant effects on student outcomes, participation in DE algebra was found to have large and significant effects on college enrollment and graduation rates for students on the margin of participation eligibility.

 

Different Approaches to Dual Enrollment: Understanding Program Features and Their Implications 

This report describes the various program models and the state and local policies and community contexts that shaped them. To help secondary and postsecondary partners consider the potential consequences of particular programming decisions, dual enrollment models are discussed in relation to the following aims:

• Making dual enrollment an attractive option for a broad range of students, particularly for youth who are low-income, struggling in high school, or part of a group that is underrepresented in higher education

• Delivering career-focused dual enrollment courses that offer high school and college credit

• Supporting students in their college courses so that they have the resources to succeed and to build self-efficacy for continued engagement in college

 

Emerging Findings from the Concurrent Courses Initiative: Pathways to College and Careers

 

The Concurrent Courses Initiative (CCI) was created to demonstrate the feasibility of using dual enrollment programs to enhance college and career pathways for low-income youth who are struggling academically or who are within populations historically underrepresented in higher education. Funded by The James Irvine Foundation, the Concurrent Courses Initiative provided support to eight secondary and postsecondary partnerships in California to develop, enhance and expand their career-focused dual enrollment programs.  Forthcoming research from this effort will be presented.

 

FORUM RESOURCES

 

National High School Center Blog - What We've Learned about Dual Enrollment

 

 

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