Giving High Schoolers a Head Start on College

I’m just back from the second annual meeting of the Blackboard Institute, where EWA was well represented. Richard Whitmire, EWA’s immediate past president, delivered the lunchtime address on his book Why Boys Fail, while board member Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed moderated a panel about student support services and yours truly moderated one on dual enrollment.

The topic of dual enrollment—arrangements that allow students to take college courses while still in high school—probably deserves more media attention than it gets. We’ve heard a lot about the phenomenal growth in popularity of AP classes in recent years, but not so much about the trend of enrolling and supporting high school kids in college classes. (Could that be because dual enrollment often involves partnerships with community colleges rather than the College Board and its prestigious national exams?)

Here’s a little background on dual enrollment. Traditionally, it’s been used to give high-performing kids a head start on the next stage of their academic careers. But in the past decade, as part of the small schools movement, new high schools have sprung up that aim to get at-risk kids on the path to postsecondary education by giving them experience in actual college courses.

The approach taken by these early college high schools, whose growth has been fueled by investments from national foundations, may seem counterintuitive. When visiting some of the prototypes of today’s early college high schools, I remember being struck by the ambitiousness of their goal: to get students in jeopardy of not graduating to leave high school not only with a diploma, but also an associate’s degree.

That’s a lofty target, and most students haven't hit it. Joel Vargas of Jobs for the Future, the Boston-based nonprofit organization that coordinates a national network of early college high schools, told us yesterday that about one in 10 students in the first cohort of graduates racked up enough college credits for a two-year degree.

Yet the figure has climbed, JFF stats show. Of the 3,000 kids who graduated in the 2008-09 school year from 64 early college high schools open for at least four years, nearly one quarter had accumulated two years' worth of college credit or an associate's degree, according to the organization. Nine out of 10 had gotten some college credit, and nearly 40 percent had racked up at least a year.

Experts at yesterday’s event pointed to research showing positive effects from dual enrollment for students from groups traditionally underserved by higher education. The research has limitations, including failing to control for the potential differences among students who do and do not pursue dual enrollment. The findings, though, suggest that dual enrollment holds promise as a strategy for getting more disadvantaged teens to go to college and succeed in their courses once there.

Yesterday, the Blackboard Institute released a useful report that includes a discussion of research on dual enrollment. Written by Elisabeth Barnett of Teachers College and Liesa Stamm of Rutgers University, the report offers journalists a handy backgrounder on the issue.

A companion report produced by the Blackboard Institute also makes for interesting reading. Did you know that North Carolina is a hotbed of early college high schools? I did, vaguely, but I didn’t realize that the state now has 72 early college high schools, which represents a third of the early college high schools nationally. And in the past two years, the state has extended the model by starting a handful of online early college schools. This second report is a case study of that effort.

There are plenty of angles of the dual enrollment story to explore. For example, it’s clear that state policies can play a major role in promoting or stymieing the growth of dual enrollment, and in determining what form it takes. Consider funding. States are all over the map on who pays for the college courses high school kids take. And some states, such as Florida, require kids to have good high school GPAs to be dual-enrolled, while others, such as North Carolina, do not. Interestingly, requiring a minimum GPA may deny access to some of the very kids who could most benefit from a different course-taking experience: those who aren’t succeeding in their regular high school classes. On the other hand, it could avoid setting kids up for failure.

Programs also vary on practical details, such as whether dual enrollment adds extra classes to students' courseloads or replace the ones required in high school; whether the classes are given at the high schools, the colleges, or online; who teaches them; what teacher credentials and training are required; and whether students get dual credit for the classes.

Even advocates of dual enrollment acknowledge an array of obstacles to such programs' expansion, ranging from out-of-sync academic calendars for high schools and colleges to technology to funding. But with interest growing in finding ways for the nation to regain its historical edge in college attainment, dual enrollment seems worthy of a closer look.