Katherine Hughes hughes@tc Community College Research Center

1. Partnering with Postsecondary: How and Why to Include Dual Enrollment as an Integral Part of a Partnership Academy Katherine Hughes hughes@tc.edu Community College Research Center Teachers College, Columbia University Educating for Careers/California Partnership Academy Conference February 15, 2012

2. Outline of Presentation • What is dual enrollment? Who is it for? • Why develop a dual enrollment program? • Broad issues • Promising outcomes • What do I need to consider when developing or implementing a dual enrollment program? • Program variation • Program features to consider • Stages and steps

3. Models of College Credit-Earning in High School

4. Who Participates in Dual Enrollment? • Broad participation nationwide, and appears to be growing • Students took courses for dual credit in 71% of high schools. • Over 800,000 high school students took a college course (2002-2003). • Growing focus on underrepresented, first-generation, and middle-achieving students • Growth of career and technical education (CTE) focused dual enrollment

5. Why Dual Enrollment? • Low levels of college access, retention, and completion, particularly for disadvantaged students. • Economic benefits to obtaining a postsecondary credential • National “Completion Agenda” • Presumed benefits to dual enrollment include: • Students get a taste of college and learn college-going behaviors. • Students enter college with credit already accumulated. • Potential cost savings to families and education systems. • Make the senior year meaningful/reduce senioritis. • Creation of connections between high schools and colleges. • Earning college credit in high school is positively related to “academic momentum” in college. • Benefit of transcripted credit as opposed to articulated credit

6. What Does the Research Say About Dual Enrollment? • Growing body of literature showing a relationship between dual enrollment participation and positive outcomes for a wide range of students. • Findings are not definitive. • Poor controls for students’ prior achievement and motivation. • No proof of causality.

7. Program Design and Implementation Matter • Intensity of participation may improve dual enrollment outcomes (CCRC, 2007). • College campus-based (as opposed to high school-based) dual enrollment appears to drive positive outcomes in Florida (Speroni, 2011). • Participation in rigorous dual enrollment courses is related to positive outcomes, while participation in other dual enrollment courses may not be (Speroni, 2011).

8. When implementing a dual enrollment program… …the overarching goal is to develop a program that is authentic and supportive. • Authenticity: A program in which students can “try on” the part of a college student so that they can become capable of doing college work • Supportive: Scaffold students’ learning, ideally by building learning support into class time

9. Dual Enrollment Programs Vary along a Range of Features • Admissions requirements • Location • Timing • Student mix • Instructors • Course content and sequence • Method of credit earning • Program intensity and support services • Funding

10. Admissions • Tension between broad access and limiting college courses to those who are ready. • Do not want to exclude students who haven’t been successful in high school but could benefit from a college course. • Do not want to include students who may fail at their first college endeavor. • Types of admissions requirements include: • Minimum grade point average • Minimum test score/ requirement to place into college-level courses • Teacher recommendation • Age or grade level

11. Location of Classes

12. Time of Day

13. Type of Instructor

14. Course Selection and Content • Dual enrollment course offerings should be driven by program goals. • Provide entry to a CTE pathway? • Improve students’ academic skills? • Give students tools for college success? • Choosing the right course can influence student persistence, particularly for lower-achieving students.

16. Credit Earning

17. Types of Supports Sources of Support

18. What else do I need to consider? • Quality dual enrollment programs require significant planning and communication among partners • Activities often shift as lessons are learned through implementation • Steps to implementation

19. 1. Establish a partnership • Identify a partner or partners • Engage high-level administrators • Identify a lead partner • Define partners’ roles and division of labor • Communicate clearly and frequently • Write and execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

20. 2. Familiarize the Partners with Relevant Regulations • What are your state regulations regarding dual enrollment? • Which program features are addressed? • Is there funding for dual enrollment? • On what are they silent? • Are there any additional district or college regulations? • Identify the barriers and challenges regulations may present

21. 3. Determine Your Program Model • Using the decision matrices presented earlier, decide upon: • Program courses and sequences • Course logistics (where, when, and who) • Student supports

22. 4. Determine Your Costs • What will the costs be? • Courses and instructors • Books • Transportation • Staff time for coordination and oversight • Costs associated with support activities • Who will pay, and for what? • How will you split funding requirements? • Will students pay some portion? • What type of grant funding is available?

23. Funding • Funding arrangements vary widely, with implications for institutions and individuals. • Tuition: • Students paying tuition may exclude low-income students. • Institutional responsibility for tuition may discourage institutional participation, particularly when institutions are already suffering from low funding. • State funding may be unstable. • FTE/ ADA: • Losing funds can be a disincentive for participation for institutions. • Double-funding may not be politically popular. • An alternative: Institutions share the funding burden

24. 5. Promote and Sustain the Program • Recruit students into the program • Who is responsible for recruitment? • What activities will reach your target student? • Formal (recruitment fairs) and informal (word-of-mouth) activities • How can you leverage other partners in your recruitment efforts? • Develop strategies to make the program sustainable • Promote the program to industry or college partners • Identify external funding opportunities

25. 6. Measure Success • Descriptive research: Describes your program or students • Implementation research: Examines program structure and implementation, as related to program quality • Outcomes research: Analyzes whether students who participate in your program have better outcomes than other, similar students

26. Websites and Resources Community College Research Center http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu Concurrent Courses Initiative http://www.concurrentcourses.org National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships http://nacep.org Jobs for the Future http://www.jff.org Early College High School Initiative http://www.earlycolleges.org

27. Thanks to the James Irvine Foundation!For more information: Please visit us on the web at http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu, where you can download presentations, reports, and briefs, and sign-up for news announcements. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter. Community College Research Center Institute on Education and the Economy, Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street, Box 174, New York, NY 10027 E-mail: ccrc@columbia.edu Telephone: 212.678.3091