The small office helped the southeast Michigan community college establish better relationships with 21 neighboring school districts and grow its dual enrollment population by 37% over the next three years.

Like Macomb, many of the community colleges and four-year universities in Michigan have put more of their resources toward a fast-growing demographic: high schoolers. As a result, Michigan’s dual enrollment population grew by 16% in 2023-24, with high school juniors and seniors accounting for .

“We knew that we had a lot of potential to grow that population, but really needed to put more intentional focus on it and additional resources,” said Aimee Adamski, director of Enrollment Services at Macomb Community College.

Across the country, via dual enrollment in 2023-24, with an additional 300,000 students receiving both high school and college academic credits for taking courses. Studies show dual enrollment has been found to have on college access, degree attainment, credit accumulation and completion of high school. But, as has found, these benefits could go even further by expanding outreach to underserved high schools and communities.

Although Michigan is keenly focused on for students to earn college credits during high school, it still lags behind its Midwest neighbors, including states like Indiana, where high school students account for more than a quarter of undergraduate enrollment, .

Community college advocates believe one way Michigan could grow dual enrollment even further is by removing the requirement that school districts pay for the courses. Michigan public schools are funded by a yearly foundation allowance provided by the state of $10,050 per student. Currently, the district is obligated to pay for whatever portion of classes a student takes via dual enrollment, creating a heavy financial burden. So if 20% of a student’s classes for the year are through dual enrollment, the school district will pay around $2,000 of that student’s $10,050 foundation allowance toward those dual enrollment courses.

The Michigan Community College Association, Detroit Regional Chamber have recommended the state for dual enrollment programs, such as a designated categorical grant or the state’s postsecondary scholarship fund.

“We have the right ingredients for a really robust dual enrollment participation in Michigan,” Michigan Community College Association President Brandy Johnson said. “The problem is really aligning the fiscal incentives to make sure that K-12 school districts are truly shouting the benefits of dual enrollment from the rooftops without being nervous about how it’s going to impact their bottom line.”

Michigan Department of Education spokesman Ken Coleman said the state wants to expand secondary learning opportunities for all students, including dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, Early Middle College, career and technical education programs and International Baccalaureate. Coleman said the state’s education department is reviewing the MCCA’s report. In the meantime, the state’s Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential will focused on improving Michigan’s dual enrollment policies and increasing its participation rates. 

Meetings students’ evolving needs

Dearborn Public Schools has built one of the most robust dual enrollment and early middle college programs in Michigan, with approximately 56% of eligible seniors enrolled in at least one college course. Its unique K-14 model allows students to blend high school and college classes and to graduate in five years with both a high school diploma and associate degree or trade certificate. 

Dearborn’s partnership with neighboring Henry Ford College, for example, opened the door for more than 3,800 students to take nearly 9,000 college classes in 2024-25, Dearborn Executive Director of Student Achievement Diana Shahin said. The district estimated it provided $5.8 million in 2024-25 to pay for dual enrollment and early middle college tuition and books. 

The district works with students as early as middle school to identify possible career paths and provides four different early middle colleges to accommodate specific careers in education and engineering. Shahin said it is important Dearborn Public Schools offer a variety of postsecondary education options because it is competing with neighboring schools for the same pool of students.

“I think the way we understand traditional education as we once knew it feels somewhat antiquated,” Shahin said. “I think students want to be able to accomplish more in a shorter period of time, and they have lots of options at their fingertips in the world. So, school districts are having to compete with the various options and really have to listen to their audience. If we’re not serving our students and changing and being innovative and growing and learning with the technology and with the access to information, then we’re behind.”

Providing incentives

Beyond increased outreach from community colleges and universities, Johnson said high school students have plenty of their own motivation to pursue dual enrollment.

Michigan allows high school students to enroll in up to 10 college classes through dual enrollment. While many students choose to take courses toward an associate’s degree or certificate, Johnson said most of them use the courses to make early progress toward a degree at a four-year university. 

“There is a ton of motivation to take as many courses as they can,” Johnson said. “The truth is, our dual enrollment students are our most successful students. They have higher course completion rates than the general population, and I think that has everything to do with how much incredible support they get from their K-12 settings. They have other teachers, school counselors, principals, coaches and their parents, who typically they still live with, that are cheering them on.”

While listening to families and building partnerships with surrounding districts helps boost interest in dual enrollment, Macomb Community College’s Adamski said it is undeniable that the motivation for high school students to take college classes is financially-driven.

“It can be a really financially supportive way to help a student access and move through those barriers that they might have to higher education — get them that early start and really help launch them toward their career objectives,” she said.

With this in mind, Johnson said she would like to see the cost barriers district schools face removed so students can take full advantage of Michigan’s dual enrollment opportunities.

“At the end of the day, the system we have now is that (public) school districts bear the full cost of dual enrollment out of their per pupil foundation allowance and it’s exactly the disincentive that we think is a reason for why school districts haven’t expanded more,” Johnson said.

“I felt loved while I was on campus by my professors,” Johnson said. “I felt affirmed. I saw people who looked like me aspiring to complete higher education, and telling me, ‘I want to be a doctor, I want to be an educator or a lawyer.’ ”

Johnson is now looking to make that experience possible for a new generation of students of color, as the founding principal of the first early college high school in New York City inspired by historically Black colleges and universities. HBCU Early College Prep High School, which opened in Queens, New York, in fall 2025, is part of a broader effort to create innovative, community-driven and accelerated high schools designed in the style of HBCUs like Delaware State.

Students will graduate with not only a high school diploma, but also an associate’s degree and a guaranteed spot at Delaware State, founded in 1891 and ranked 10th overall among all HBCUs today. Just as important, they will experience a unique school culture modeled after Delaware State and other HBCUs. In fact, by their junior year students will be taught directly — but remotely — by Delaware State professors for certain courses.

Although New York City is home to more than 100 higher education institutions, it has no HBCUs. In fact, there are none in all of New York state.

“Young people of color just are not being exposed to HBCUs at all,” Johnson said. “We’re not even talking about HBCUs,” whose distinguished list of graduates include former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and actor and producer Samuel L. Jackson, to name a few. “And if we are, we’re either discrediting them, or we’re telling students that they can’t afford it, or they don’t give scholarships — none of which is true.” 

That concern is echoed in UNCF’s recent , which finds that many K–12 students — especially students of color — still lack meaningful exposure to HBCUs. The report underscores the urgent need for clearer, intentional pathways connecting young people to these historically Black institutions.

The new school, and the broader effort to develop HBCU-inspired high schools, is made possible with support from a partnership between UNCF (formerly the United Negro College Fund), the XQ Institute and Transcend, a national nonprofit that helps to design and support innovative schools. This coalition of organizations is also in the early stages of transforming an existing New Orleans public school into an HBCU-inspired, early college high school, with other communities also being explored for such efforts.

“This work only happens because of the strength of the partnership,” said Sarah Navarro, the chief of schools and systems for the XQ Institute. “UNCF brings deep expertise in what makes HBCUs so powerful for student success. Transcend supports and facilitates the design process with communities. XQ ensures the model is built to transform high school — not just launch a single school. 

“Together, we’re not just opening a new campus. We’re building a scalable model for how high schools across the country can connect students to college, culture and opportunity in a lasting way.”

Key hallmarks of HBCU Early College Prep include accelerated coursework, youth voice and choice, real-world learning and a deep connection to the local community.

Students are taking college courses beginning in ninth grade, with teachers receiving training by faculty at Delaware State, said Shawn Rux, a senior executive director in the Office of New School Development & Design at the NYC Department of Education, a key partner of the coalition. Eventually, those students will take virtual classes with Delaware State professors.

“The ‘intentionality around the school design” is key to this enterprise,” said Sekou Biddle, vice president for advocacy at UNCF. As part of the effort, the team asked, “What is it that we know about the HBCU experience that is so catalytic for students? And what if we were intentional about bringing those elements into high school?”

“It’s around [school] culture, it’s around instruction, but then it’s around bringing those principles to life,” Biddle said.

Channeling the ‘HBCU Magic’

To Rux and others, it’s not just the academic challenge; it’s the combination of that rigor with a strong, positive school culture that nurtures students and provides them a thoughtfully designed support system.

“I call it the HBCU magic,” said Rux, a Delaware State alumnus himself.

A valuable resource and reference point for the design of the new school came from a 2020 UNCF report, Biddle said.

“HBCUs are often overlooked as sources of effective methods for producing high-achieving Black students, although their existence is based on this very premise,” the Imparting Wisdom report notes. “HBCUs have been engines for ingenuity, academic excellence and social justice for decades, and the strategies and practices they implement can inform educational practices and systems.”

The report identifies a series of recommendations based on three “best practices” among HBCUs including: cultivating nurturing support systems with a high level of student and faculty interaction; leveraging African American culture and identity; and setting high academic expectations and an intentional college-going culture.

Competition to attend the new public high school was fierce, with some 1,000 applicants for about 100 seats. The school will grow each year, as it progresses from having ninth graders only to eventually a full slate of students in grades 9 through 12.

To apply, students are required to not only submit their academic credentials (including test scores), but also write a short essay about the Amanda Gorman poem, “The Hill We Climb,” and submit a video statement about themselves. While many students in the new class attended other New York City public schools previously, some came from private and parochial schools, according to Johnson.

“Our school is actually bringing students back into the public school system,” she said.

Designed for Belonging

Among those to earn a spot at the new Queens public school are ninth graders Mya Williams and Chance Thomas.

Mya, an aspiring veterinarian, was attracted to the school after hearing about it at a school assembly. Principal Johnson had been visiting middle schools to drum up interest.

“She talked about how we would get an associate’s degree at the end of our four years, and we would get college credits,” Mya said. “And that really caught my attention.”

Both students describe their new school as academically demanding, but also supportive.

According to Chance, the school is cultivating students’ work ethic and valuable skills like time management. “They definitely push us with the workload and the expectations, because a lot of our peers [at other schools] don’t have that,” she said. “Expectations are really high, but our professors [how teachers are referred to] are really supportive.” 

“I think it’s good that we’re challenged,” Mya said. “It’s preparing us for college.”

The two students also highlighted the “house” system, akin in some respects to sororities and fraternities, or to the student houses featured in the Harry Potter books and films, an analogy offered up by Principal Johnson. In fact, HBCU Early College Prep uses a point system like Hogwarts School, with rewards for those that amass the most. But in this case, the houses are named after well-known HBCUs like Spelman College and Howard University.

The experience “builds a sisterhood and brotherhood within those houses,” Chance said.

“Listen to how these students talk about their school. They’re describing rigor and community in the same breath,” said Aylon Samouha, co-founder and CEO of Transcend. “That’s not an accident. That’s the result of intentional design.”

“When students feel like they belong to something meaningful,” Samouha said, “when the adults around them have high expectations and real support structures, engagement stops being something you have to manufacture. It becomes the natural byproduct of a school that was designed with students’ full humanity in mind.”

Coming “home”

It didn’t take long for ninth graders at the new school to experience Delaware State firsthand. In November of last year, HBCU Early College Prep organized a field trip for students over homecoming weekend.

During the visit, the ninth graders toured campus and participated in a pinning ceremony with the college president. Over time, students will have the chance to attend career fairs and other activities at Delaware State, said Kareem McLemore, the university’s vice president for strategic enrollment management and international affairs. And, they will be earning college credits from the institution each year.

The high schoolers also had a chance to meet with upperclass students at an existing early college high school located on the Delaware State campus to better understand the accelerated model.

As part of the model, each student also is paired with a “success coach,” an upperclassman from Delaware State who can provide remote support, including tutoring and personalized academic advising.

As a brand new school with only ninth graders right now, HBCU Early College Prep is still early in its journey. But Principal Johnson, Rux from the city education department and their coalition partners are aiming high:

“We just want to make sure,” Rux said, “that when students walk out that door at the end of their four years, they’re fully prepared to really take on the world.”

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It’s a choice about what you study, who teaches it and how fast you can move from high school to a credential and a career. That hidden-in-plain-sight choice is dual enrollment — high school students taking college courses for credit.

is an opportunity to point out that dual enrollment is one of the largest and fastest-growing forms of public school choice in America. It’s a school choice growth story that no one’s talking about.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently a modest increase in college undergraduate enrollment in fall 2025 — about 1%, driven by a 3% increase in community college enrollment. Buried inside those headlines is a key driver of that community college growth.

More high school students are enrolling in college courses through dual enrollment. The total increased 5.9% (about 66,000 additional students) last fall, reaching 1.19 million. That represents nearly 1 in 5 community college students. That is not a boutique program. That is a system.

Look beyond community colleges, and the picture is even bigger. A Community College Research Center shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, there were 2.8 million dual enrollment students nationwide, a 12.7% increase over the prior year (about 300,000 additional students).

That analysis also reports that community colleges serve about 71% of all dual-enrolled students. And in some states — for example, — high schoolers make up more than half of community college enrollments.

School choice is often treated as an exit strategy: You leave your assigned school for another academic option. Dual enrollment works differently. It expands opportunity inside public education, often without requiring a family to move, win a lottery or navigate a complex school choice marketplace.

In other words, dual enrollment is school choice by another name: course choice at scale. It gives students the power to choose advanced academic coursework, career and technical courses or early college classes, sometimes taught at a college, sometimes at a high school campus and increasingly online. For many young people, the last years of high school effectively become the first year of college.

Dual enrollment functions like school choice in at least four practical ways:

• It lets young people choose courses and pathways, not just buildings. A student can opt into college algebra, emergency medical tech coursework, welding or introductory psychology while still anchored in a familiar school community.
  
• It expands opportunity in rural and small districts. Where there may be only one high school, dual enrollment, especially through hybrid or online delivery, can dramatically widen access to advanced courses.
  
• It creates choice across K-12, higher education and the workforce. The best models link course sequences to degrees, certificates and regional labor market demand.
  
• It is scalable and public. Dual enrollment often leverages institutions that already exist, especially community colleges, making it one of the fastest ways to expand opportunity without building a new system from scratch.

Done well, dual enrollment gives students a first taste of college-level expectations, lowers the cost of a credential and accelerates the path to a good first job. It is one of the few interventions that can reduce both the time and price of postsecondary attainment while building confidence — especially for first-generation students who benefit from early proof that they are capable of college.

Dual enrollment students are to finish high school, enter postsecondary education and complete college degrees than their non-dual-enrolled peers. And participation is associated with better college outcomes for Black and Hispanic students.

But averages conceal disparities and design flaws. Dual enrollment can devolve into what many educators quietly recognize as random acts of dual credit. This occurs when a scattering of classes doesn’t add up to a credential, credits don’t transfer cleanly, there is uneven rigor across sites and equity gaps widen instead of closing. Choice without structure can become confusing.

If phase one of dual enrollment was about scale, phase two must be about coherence that turns participation into mobility. Here are five ways that would protect choice while increasing quality and payoff.

Promote set pathways, not just random courses. Group classes into simple, step-by-step plans that end in something that counts: transferable college credit, a short credential that applies to a degree or job-linked courses in fields that are hiring.

Make credit transfers count automatically. Publish clear “this course counts as that course” lists across colleges and set statewide rules so students don’t lose credits when they move from one campus to another.

Treat advising as part of the program, not an add-on. Students need help choosing courses that fit their workload, match their goals and will still matter after graduation — otherwise, they may rack up credits that don’t help.

Protect quality and show results plainly. Set clear expectations for course rigor and instruction, then report basic data: who enrolls, who passes and whether credits actually move students toward degrees or credentials.

Build access in from the start. Remove fees, ensure access to transportation and the internet, recruit students who are often left out and provide tutoring — so dual enrollment narrows gaps instead of widening them.

Dual enrollment doesn’t fit neatly into the usual school choice categories. It isn’t a charter school or a different district school. It isn’t an education savings account for a private school. It isn’t homeschooling.

It is a public, cross-institutional strategy that expands options without requiring students to abandon their schools. That’s exactly why it deserves a bigger place in the National School Choice Week story.

School choice is ultimately about giving young people more ways to build a future that fits them. One of the most powerful forms of choice today may be the one that simply lets students begin college — intentionally, coherently and with support — while they’re still in high school.

Dual-enrollment programs are open to students at all levels of academic proficiency, not just the certified high achievers. In fact, that low-income teens and others historically underrepresented in higher education experience the biggest positive impacts from being given early access to college work.

So, if so many of the teens who need early access to college-level work the most are earning credits before graduation, it begs the question: Is high school necessary?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to send students directly to community college after middle school, so they might begin accruing credits toward a college degree while covering the same material they would learn in high school anyway? 

I have written before about how my son dropped out of his highly ranked high school due to boredom but wasn’t allowed to enroll at CUNY without a diploma. Being able to head straight to college after eighth grade would have been a game changer for him, and for our family.

Cost, of course, is a factor. But New York state already has a that subsidizes a community college education for students ages 25 to 55 entering in-demand fields. Why not extend it to 14- to 24-year-olds? It should make no difference, from a financial perspective, if the state is paying for a student to attend a public high school or a community college. 

It could even end up saving money in the long run, as the student would substitute two years in community college for a traditional four-year 9-12 education. Students who transferred to community college after ninth, 10th or 11th grade — whenever they felt ready — would still spend fewer years in the public education system, while the academic result would stay the same.

But the benefits of allowing willing students to bypass high school entirely and enroll directly in community college wouldn’t be limited to bureaucratic economizing. For instance:

• It would help families save money on college expenses, if the student could transfer community college credits to a four-year college.
  
•  It would lower dropout rates for bored students like my son, and for the kid who is constantly asking, “Why do I need to learn this?” College courses are much better at demonstrating why students need to learn the material, especially if it’s part of a major they have chosen. And the earlier students commence their college career, the .��

• In the case of New York, it would help prevent brain drain. All three of my children attended college out of state. The situation likely would have been different if they’d been able to do two free years of community college as soon as they were ready for it, and then seamlessly transfer to a four-year State University of New York school.��

• It would bolster community college enrollment and help those schools remain sustainable. Currently, students attending CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College are high-schoolers. Under-18 students also make up the majority at five other community colleges statewide.
  
• It would make community college an equally valued and desired education destination, not something to be mocked. One of my son’s high school teachers would taunt his class that if they didn’t study hard, they’d end up “stuck” at the nearby community college. As a parent, I was furious with the demeaning description.

• If even a fraction of New York City high schoolers opted to go straight to community college, it would help with the looming mandate for smaller class sizes. With fewer students entering ninth grade, the district wouldn’t need to scramble as much for extra teachers and physical space to meet the 2027 requirement, and it would open up seats at some of the most coveted high schools to students who might have been shut out otherwise. Fewer families would leave for private schools, which would bolster the city’s public school enrollment numbers.

• Finally, over a lifetime, college graduates than adults with only a high school diploma. The earlier students can finish college and enter the job market, the earlier — and more — they can start earning.��

This doesn’t mean that students who wish to follow the traditional high school-to-college route should be blocked from doing so. Those who decide the community college route is not a good fit for them should have the option of returning to traditional high school, too.

But allowing teenagers who believe they are ready to skip high school for college to do so would be a win-win for students, for families and for the public school system at every level.

Every morning, all of the roughly 100 seniors at Kingsborough Early College Secondary school start their day taking classes together at CUNY Kingsborough Community College.

In the afternoon, they hop on a yellow school bus and head back to their school on the Lafayette educational campus about 15 minutes away.

Kingsborough juniors make the reverse trek. They start their morning at the Lafayette campus then take the bus to the community college for afternoon classes.

By the time the students graduate high school, most have earned associate degrees from CUNY Kingsborough. In fact, the majority — 57% — of CUNY Kingsborough students are not stereotypical college students. They’re high schoolers, according to a from a New York coalition of advocates and education institutions.

CUNY Kingsborough is one of six community colleges across the state where high schoolers make up the majority of students. It could be the harbinger of something bigger. As dual enrollment programs — where high school students take college courses and earn college-level credit — are expanding in New York state and elsewhere.

The state Education Department is making these programs a priority. It recently requiring institutions to not only report their dual enrollment partnership agreements but also to provide data on enrollment and outcomes. The idea is to help officials and educators get a better grasp on the variety of dual enrollment programs and find ways to ensure the programs reach more students who are underrepresented in higher education.

The stakes are high: According to a 2024 , workers will need a bachelor’s degree for 66% of “good jobs” in 2031 — defined as one that pays a minimum of $43,000 a year nationally to workers ages 25-44.

The state’s proposed rules, which it’s expected to adopt early next year, will mark the state’s first consistent policy governing these programs. Additionally, the state to support dual enrollment and other early college programs to focus on enrolling more students from low-income families.

Several studies have celebrated dual enrollment programs for helping put students on a path to college by exposing them to high-level coursework.

At Kingsborough, the program has proven so successful that many of its students not only complete higher education degrees, they eventually return to work at the school. Of the school’s 80 staffers, 16 are graduates, its principal, Tracee Murren, said.

And there’s one other very obvious benefit dual enrollment programs frequently offer: Students can save money by earning college credits, often for free, before they finish high school.

Early college programs help families save on average $13,000 on the cost of a bachelor’s degree, said Alexandra Wilcox, deputy director of the , the group that studied the state’s dual enrollment expansion.

Research has found students in these programs are also more likely , , and earn a within six years.

“It really is a game changer in terms of being able to save time and money to a degree,” Wilcox said.

But a deeper understanding of the types of programs, who they’re serving, and what their outcomes are — the things the state is proposing to capture — will ultimately strengthen dual enrollment programs, said Wilcox.

Though New York pioneered dual enrollment programs, launching them more than 50 years ago, the state’s approach in terms of policy and funding has been “inconsistent and unpredictable,” Wilcox said.

NYC has range of early college programs

Across New York state, dual enrollment jumped 15% year-over-year, the alliance report found. It now has the nation’s third largest number of students in dual enrollment with more than 176,000, behind California and Texas.

In New York City, the majority of dual enrollment students are in , where they take college-level courses at CUNY for free, generally as an add-on to their regular high school courses. But there’s rising interest in the early college approach, which integrates college courses more deeply into the curriculum. About 30,000 students take College Now courses while roughly 3,500 students take CUNY classes through early college courses, a CUNY spokesperson said.

Nearly 45 out of the city’s 400 high schools offer early college programs, according to the city’s MySchools lookup tool.

The early college model traces its roots to , which opened in 1974 to provide students who struggled in traditional schools with an opportunity to take courses at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where the school is still located.

Some early college programs do not screen students based on their academic records, like Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. That school launched in Brooklyn in 2011 and across the boroughs that offer a six-year program, grades 9-14, each affiliated with different CUNY institutions. Students at these schools can graduate with an associate degree in a STEM field at no cost.

Other programs are highly selective. Bard College, a liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, has four New York City campuses, where Bard professors teach students, who go through a rigorous admissions process involving a test and interview. The newly opened — which partners with Delaware State University, a historically Black institution — also admits students based on GPAs, a writing exercise, and a video submission. The HBCU Early College students take online classes through Delaware State.

Access to dual enrollment programs shifts

At , which opened in 2006, the school targets students who are underserved in higher education — those “not typically selected for gifted and talented,” Murren said.

The school starts in sixth grade, admitting students through a lottery. Demand for it is high: Roughly 1,000 students apply for 100 seats every year.

Roughly 40 to 50% enter the program reading below grade level, Murren said, and the school takes an intensive approach to ensure they’re ready to read dense college-level material as they reach the upper grades. Middle schoolers also have an advisory class every day to ensure they have the “mental fortitude” to take on college-level work, she said.

The students take their first college class in ninth grade, a Spanish course, stretching it from one semester to the entire year to make it slower and more digestible, Murren said. The school intentionally starts with a foreign language since it’s a course that many four-year colleges require and has no prerequisites.

Professors from CUNY Kingsborough Community College come to the Lafayette campus to teach the freshman and sophomores in the afternoon, and the school has an extended day to accommodate these courses.

Balancing high school and the more advanced college courses simultaneously isn’t easy, Murren acknowledged. But her staff is committed. There’s low teacher turnover, and they get to know most students from the age of 10.

The students, for the most part, take their college classes together once they start attending the CUNY campus, maintaining a sense of community.

Murren said the students also support each other, characterizing their approach in this way: “‘We’ve been going through this together, and I don’t want you to fall off, so I’m going to make sure that you don’t.’”

She added: “We should never doubt what our students are capable of, their abilities, and their tenacity really shines through when given the opportunity.”

Historically, many high schools have used dual enrollment programs as an acceleration strategy instead of also a strategy to promote college access, said John Fink, a researcher at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

But that’s changing. Research into dual enrollment is also shifting away from addressing whether it works and instead trying to understand how to make it work better — and for more students, not just the top students who are “already acing everything,” he said.

The key question, Fink believes, is how to make sure that families know there’s free college available to New York City high schoolers.

“Even though you think that word would get out, it doesn’t,” he said, “[but] when it’s implemented as a purposeful path to debt-free college … that marketing also helps sell the high school.”

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Campuses are quieter now that classes are out for summer break and graduation season has come and gone. Many teachers and staffers in are looking forward to relaxing and celebrating their collective achievements, one of which being that the district has seen a large growth in dual college enrollment over the past few years.

From the 2021-22 school year to the 2023-24 school year, the number of students in dual enrollment classes increased by 25% in Guilford County, according to data from the district. Dual enrollment is a term used to describe students who are enrolled in college classes while in high school, through North Carolina’s (CCP) program. Through CCP, high school students can take college level classes for free and earn credit towards a postsecondary degree, career certification, or diploma.

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Earning college credits for free through CCP can save families money and help with the future cost of college tuition. It’s estimated that the credits earned by students through dual enrollment saved families more than $2 million dollars during the 2023-24 school year, according to Dr. Whitney Oakley, superintendent of Guilford County Schools.

With those college credits, many students are able to enter college with up to one year’s worth of credits completed for free. Other students may use those credits to earn an associate degree, in addition to their high school diploma, also for free.

“After they graduated, if they were actually paying tuition like at UNC-Chapel Hill, it’s $292.46 per credit hour, at GTCC it’s $76 per credit hour,” Oakley said. “We’re thinking when we add up what kids have had access to this year, it’s $2,285,472 that families in GCS say that they otherwise would be paying for if students were not still in K-12.”

Cost savings and more

The price of postsecondary education is not a new topic of discussion. People have debated the of higher education for decades. Even so, there are always new factors to incorporate into the conversation. One timely factor is the by the U.S. Department of Education in May 2025, which marks the first time the department has done so since before the loan repayments were paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic back in March 2020.

Dual enrollment programs like early colleges and North Carolina’s CCP program can help mitigate the overall cost of college by allowing high school students the opportunity to earn college credit for free. This is a win-win situation for both students and the workforce because it allows students to earn those credits for free and gain exposure to different workforce pathways through their classes, with the hope of helping them find their desired career earlier.

“To me it solves a much larger problem if we can get it right and aligned with workforce development needs,” Oakley said. “If more students are leaving with their associate degree, or an industry credential and going into these high-wage, high-demand careers, we as K-12 are solving this talent pipeline shortage that we’re facing across the state.”

District leadership has worked closely with (GTCC) to be intentional about how they market the CCP program to students, families, and schools.

“For the last couple of years, enrollment has been steadily climbing in CCP or dual enrollment,” said Wish Bailey, the assistant director of admissions and K-12 partnerships at GTCC. “And I think a large part of that is attributed to this desire for students to accumulate as many credits as they can because it looks really good when they decide to transfer, but also trying to figure out what they want to pursue when they graduate from high school.”

District and college leaders also want to make sure people understand that these CCP courses count for the same amount of credit as other college preparatory courses, like the Advanced Placement (AP) program and the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.

“The weighting is the same and the rigor is the same. It’s accepted by UNC-Chapel Hill. It’s accepted by NC State. It’s accepted by App State,” said Dr. Anthony Clarke, president of GTCC. “​​It’s a great savings for parents and for students to earn college credit…I think part of our growth is parents and students figuring that out and seeing that it saves them money.”

Maintaining growth

The growth that GCS and GTCC have seen in their CCP program is not accidental, leaders say. Both the school system and college have been putting a lot of effort and energy into their partnership and marketing to the greater community.

“We’ve been working really hard on the partnerships with Guilford County Schools, making sure that the counselors, as well as the parents and the students, really understand what’s being offered and making it really easy for them to enroll,” said Ann Proudfit, the vice president for student services at GTCC.

Bailey, who helps lead the implementation of K-12 partnerships for GTCC, has hosted several informational sessions about the CCP program and been intentional about reaching out to different stakeholders in the community — students, teachers, parents, counselors, and more.

“I also think the department’s outreach, by going to high schools and talking to counselors more and talking to families more about the program and the benefits of the program, (is) really just letting students know that they have this as an option,” Bailey said.

She believes that the relationships she cultivates partnered with focused outreach have resulted in more students gaining awareness of the CCP program. It’s that knowledge of possibility that has grown and continues to grow enrollment in the CCP program.

“The more that people have knowledge of the program, the more that will grow enrollment, because everyone is aware of the opportunities that are really close by,” Bailey said. “I think that’s a big part of it.”

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By 2:45 p.m. the regular school day at August Boeger Middle School had already ended, but one class is about to start. More than 20 eighth graders drop their backpacks and settle into desks — not for extra credit but for college credit.

These 13- and 14-year-old students in East San Jose are taking their first college course, an entry-level class on career planning. This middle school is one of the first in the state to offer a college-level course. In the coming years, the San Jose Evergreen Community College District wants all middle school students in this school district to be able to complete three college courses before they start high school, and soon, the district plans to offer other courses, such as sociology and ethnic studies, said Beatriz Chaidez, the chancellor for the community college district.

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Middle schoolers have long been eligible to enroll in college classes in California, though only a few, high-achieving students actually do it. By offering a college class at a middle school — especially one in a high-poverty area — the community college district is looking to make that enrollment easier. The class is taught by a middle school staff member, and it’s reserved exclusively for middle school students.

But with so few programs, there is little research about whether students are benefitting, and the local faculty union is worried middle school students might not be ready.

Chaidez disagrees. “Navigating (college) as early as middle school is unheard of in their community,” she said. “So when they experience success, it really motivates them to continue.”

California is increasingly pushing high schools to offer community college classes directly to students during the regular school day, a set-up known as “dual enrollment.” Unlike AP classes, which include expensive exams and are limited to certain subjects and high-performing students, these community college classes cover a range of topics and are open to all students. By 2030, California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Chiristian wants all high school students to graduate with

Chaidez wants to go further. She wants every local high school student to be able to complete about 20 college courses by the time they graduate — enough to earn an associate’s degree.

CalMatters reached out to the college district’s faculty union, which was surprised to learn the district is offering classes at a middle school.

“This opens up some problems,” said Jessica Breheny, an English professor and the union’s vice president. “I’m sure there are 12-year-olds that are college-ready, but there are just less of them and it’s less likely. Developmentally, they have other things going on.”

Research that high schoolers who take college classes are more likely to attend college and graduate, but there’s little research on how middle school students fare, said John Fink, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. “Nationally, and in most states, this is very, very rare, and in many states this is not allowed.” Instead, he said the focus is typically on enrolling more 10th, 11th and 12th graders in college courses.

A college-level course, with a few middle school games

About 10% of California’s high school students took a community college class in the 2021-22 school year, according to by professors at UC Davis using the most recent data. California’s community college system doesn’t track how many middle school students take college courses.

So far, the Mount Pleasant Elementary School District, which includes August Boeger Middle School, offers only one college course, called “Career Planning,” and it’s almost indistinguishable from any other class on its campus. The college course is taught in a regular middle school classroom, and the professor, Oscar Lamas, already works at the middle school, where he’s a counselor. Perhaps the only noticeable difference is the timing: The middle school day ends at 2:30 p.m. and Lamas’ course starts at 2:45. He’s paid separately by the community college to teach the course.

Career Planning helps students learn about , practice resume-writing and learn psychological theories related to professional success. A governing board of college district professors, known as the Academic Senate, sets the objectives for each college course, but Lamas has broad discretion in teaching it. The Academic Senate responsible for setting the parameters of Lamas’ course did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The dean of the community college’s counseling department, Victor Garza, refused an interview request from CalMatters but issued a written statement. Garza said the middle school class is akin to other dual enrollment courses, which maintain the college’s “academic rigor.”

“Some adjustments might be needed to cater to the unique needs and experiences” of students, he added.

On a Thursday before spring break, Lamas tries to make his class more fun by breaking the students into five teams to play a Jeopardy-style quiz game on the topic of the day, .

Natalie Mendoza, 14, becomes the default spokesperson of her team, named the “Tacos R Us Club,” but she answers the first question wrong, putting her team back 300 points and prompting her classmates to burst into chatter and analyze their mistakes.

As part of the class, she has to study a career, write a short essay about it and present it at a career fair. She picked intellectual property law. “A lot of people say I’m assertive,” she said. “I think that’s a really good trait for a lawyer, and I think it’d be fun to fight for people who have created stuff.”

Natalie said she’d be the first in her family to attend college but she’s already planning to go and has a few schools in mind, including UC Berkeley and San Jose State. If she does attend one of those schools, her grade in this counseling class would be part of her official college transcript.

Breheny, with the union, said she’s concerned about the quality of the classes, especially once the college district begins teaching other subjects, such as ethnic studies.

“Faculty designed their courses for adult learners,” Breheny said. An ethnic studies class may cover topics such as sexual violence and genocide, she added — topics that may be difficult to convey to a middle schooler. “Some of the material assumes a certain knowledge about the world, about politics, which you may not have at 11, 12, 13 years old.”

High schools offer few dual enrollment classes

August Boeger Middle School sits at the base of the Diablo Range mountains, tucked between the ranch-style homes and strip malls that color East San Jose. Teachers and staff greet each other with mucho gusto instead of hello. All around the open-air campus, murals tell the story of the region’s multi-cultural heritage, especially its Mexican and Chicano roots.

That celebration of culture is a direct response to a history of adversity, Lamas said. “East San Jose has always been a marginalized, disadvantaged environment.” As a result, schools in the community contend with education disparities, he said, such as a high dropout rate and a high teen pregnancy rate.

Offering a college class to these middle school students allows them to “see a possibility for their future that doesn’t exist within these walls here” and can inspire them to reach for a higher goal, said Marisa Peña, a school advisor.

Male students, Black and Latino students and students from rural areas in the community college courses offered at California’s school districts. California lawmakers have signed numerous bills in the hopes of expanding access but certain regions in the state, such as Los Angeles, enroll a higher percentage of students.

Natalie said she hopes to continue taking college courses when she starts at Mount Pleasant High School this fall, which is just around the corner from her middle school. But her options are limited.

Mount Pleasant High School offers just three community college courses, which serve about 10% of the school’s roughly 1,000 students, said Kyle Kleckner, the school district’s director of instructional services. All of the classes are in “multimedia” studies, he said, which teaches students how to create their own podcasts or YouTube channels, along with other digital marketing skills.��

Although Mount Pleasant High School’s dual enrollment is about on par with the state average, it trails other districts in the region. Less than 20 miles away, at high schools in the Milpitas Unified School District, roughly 25% of students enrolled in a community college class in 2021-22, according to the UC Davis analysis.

Finding professors to teach middle school

Part of the dual enrollment challenge is finding qualified college professors who are willing and able to work at a high school or middle school. Existing middle and high school teachers are allowed to teach college courses but they have to meet the qualifications, which usually include a master’s degree in the area of instruction. Most of California’s high school and middle school instructors a master’s degree, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“We have graduation requirements that students have to accomplish,” Kleckner said. “The trick is finding that community college course that also fulfills those requirements and also finding a teacher who can teach it.” He said Mount Pleasant High School is committed to expanding the number of college courses but noted that it’s smaller and therefore has fewer teachers who meet the requirements to teach a college course.

In turn, many college professors lack experience teaching children, said Breheny, who teaches at San Jose City College. “We have had some problems already with dual enrollment where faculty have gone to different (high schools) to teach and have dealt with classroom management issues that they wouldn’t have in a college course.” In one case, she said a college faculty member saw bullying in a high school classroom but didn’t feel equipped to respond.

Lamas has a master’s degree, which is required for most . He’s gentle with the middle school students in his class, occasionally awarding points in the Jeopardy game even when the answer isn’t perfect. Lamas had two quiz games planned that day, each one covering a different topic, but the first game took up almost all of the class time.

He ends class by taking questions about the upcoming final project. Although spring break is minutes away, the students sit still through the final minutes, except for the occasional joke and bursts of laughter. Not a single phone was in sight.

Once class ends, however, chatter ensues, the students pull out their phones, and staff escort them to the parking lot. While they may be taking a college course, they still must wait for their parents to pick them up.

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Students tap on their keyboards as a professor lectures at the front of the room. It looks like any other college course, except that it’s taking place at a high school. This year, more than 150,000 California teens are earning college credit in dual enrollment courses.

Dual enrollment offers high schoolers the chance to attend community college, typically for free, often without having to leave their campuses. By helping students tackle the college academic experience, the programs increase the likelihood that students attend college after graduating high school.

About 80% of California’s dual enrolled high school students go on to a community college or university, compared to 66% of California 12th grade students in general, the More than a third of California’s dual enrolled students go on to attend the same community college they attended while in high school after they graduate, according to the

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Many college and high school administrators have pushed to increase students’ college attainment rates, and the state has invested in dual enrollment, leading to a significant expansion. The number of students in these courses tripled between spring 2015 and spring 2024, according to state data. The Public Policy Institute of California found that about 30% of California’s high school graduating class of 2024 took at least one dual enrollment course.

The growth of high schoolers is a bright spot in overall student totals at the state’s community colleges, which have after enrollment tanked during the pandemic. However, some community college faculty have pushed back against widespread dual enrollment due to concerns about academic rigor and working conditions for educators.

Furthermore, data shows that some of California’s rural students, as well as males and students of color, don’t enroll in and complete these courses at the same rate as others. Some experts and administrators say they’re not just missing out on a couple of college credits, they’re not getting the same opportunities to envision themselves as future college students.

“When high schoolers complete these courses, they are able to fulfill requirements that help them access associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees,” said Daniel Payares-Montoya, a PPIC research associate. “The students benefit, but so do the community colleges, because it helps them enroll more students.”

Rural schools and colleges face dual enrollment hurdles 

In Siskiyou County, at the northern tip of California, the only community college serves a sprawling region that covers mountains, forests and rural towns. Although the county has a population of just 43,000, it is the fifth largest county in California by area, meaning that often the hardest part of supporting dual enrolled students isn’t the actual teaching — it’s having the right technology and transportation to reach them in the first place.

“The personal interaction is a challenge, because we have high schools that are two hours away,” said Kim Peacemaker, a counselor and dual enrollment coordinator at College of the Siskiyous. The college currently has about 230 dual enrolled high school students and about 2,390 students total, based on state data.

Peacemaker said the college has worked to make dual enrollment accessible by allowing professors to meet virtually with students in their high school classrooms. However, she added that some students don’t have reliable internet access at home for homework or tutoring. In Siskiyou County, don’t have broadband internet.

California’s rural colleges generally lag behind urban colleges in dual enrollment. Kern Community College District in the southern Central Valley and the Compton Community College District near Los Angeles had the two highest percentages of high school students in 2024, at 41%  and 36%  respectively, based on state data. In comparison, 9.7% of students at College of the Siskiyous are dual enrolled high schoolers, and this drops to about 5% in some other parts of the state.

Sonya Christian, the chancellor of the California Community College system, previously led the Kern Community College District, spearheading its expansion of dual enrollment. Now, dual enrollment in the district is “one of the most successful models in the state,” Christian said in an emailed statement to CalMatters.

“I prioritized dual enrollment because I saw it as a potential pathway to increase college-going rates, accelerate degree completion and provide students — especially those in rural and low-income communities — with early exposure to college-level coursework,” Christian said in the statement.

For many high school students in the small city of Blythe, which sits along California’s border with Arizona, the only people they know with bachelor’s degrees are their teachers. That’s why Clint Cowden, the vice president of instruction and student services at Palo Verde College, said the exposure to college that dual enrollment provides these students can be transformative.

“It’s really a win-win for the community,” Cowden said.

A recent alumnus of Palo Verde College’s dual enrollment program, Manuel Milke earned his high school diploma and his associate degree simultaneously, while juggling varsity soccer and football. Now Milke, who is 19, is set to graduate in the fall from San Diego State with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. Milke said he chose to attend San Diego State to stay close to his family in Blythe, and aspires to work as a physical therapist somewhere nearby.

“Everyone should do dual enrollment,” said Milke. “It saved me time, it saved me money and it made me feel more prepared for college.”

Student gaps remain in dual enrollment

As a Latino male, Milke is in the minority for dual enrollment. Based on state data, Black and Latino students are both underrepresented in dual enrollment courses. In the spring 2024 semester, 41% of dual enrollment students were male, while 56% were female. According to Payares-Montoya, these gaps in access to dual enrollment can make it so Black, Latino and male students are less likely to see higher education as an option, compared to their dual enrolled peers.

For Jesse Medrano, an 18-year-old senior at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District, dual enrollment has provided “a good outline of what college is like.” His high school first placed him in dual enrollment in ninth grade, and since then he has taken five classes, covering topics including economics and political science.

“I didn’t have the drive to seek these courses out, so the fact that they put me in them set this standard for me, and now I’m meeting it,” said Medrano, who is Latino and plans to study accounting at Cal State Northridge. “I didn’t have the motivation, but now I do, and I’m able to succeed.”

At Compton College more than a third of the current students are still in high school, according to state data. Latino and Black students comprise 75% and 9% of dual enrollees, respectively, which are significantly higher than state averages. Keith Curry, the college’s president, said that when students of color complete dual enrollment courses, this gets them comfortable with college academics and leads to better representation at colleges and universities.

Some faculty push back against expansion

Some community college faculty have raised concerns about the process by which dual enrollment partnerships are established, the level of readiness of high school students for college courses, and who teaches these classes. In many districts across the state, some dual enrollment courses are not taught by community college faculty, but by existing high school teachers who hold the credentials required to teach at a college level. In the Kern Community College District, about 60% of dual enrollment courses held on high school campuses are taught by high school teachers who meet the college qualifications, according to district spokesperson Norma Rojas.

Tim Maxwell, an English professor at College of San Mateo, is a “conscientious objector” to California’s expansion of dual enrollment. Maxwell said he is concerned about what he sees as a focus to get as many students to graduate and earn college credits as quickly as possible, sacrificing college-level rigor and evaluation.

“Completion is important, but our primary responsibility is for students to learn something along the way,” said Maxwell, who has taught community college courses for about 30 years.

Maxwell has taught creative writing courses on his college campus with several dual enrolled students, one as young as 15 years old, and he said these students are “phenomenal.” But, he added, there’s a difference between a handful of proactive high schoolers going to a community college campus and a high school classroom that “switches to a college class during fifth period.” He said he is concerned about poor working conditions for professors, primarily adjunct faculty, who have to travel to high schools and teach without the proper background or support.

“We need to resist this, and we need lawmakers who understand something about education and not just spreadsheets,” Maxwell said.

Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, the president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, said dual enrollment is beneficial for students, but that she has “heard grumblings” about a need for faculty to have a more active role in setting standards and policies for dual enrollment.

While in high school in Blythe, Milke said his dual enrollment courses were generally easier than the courses he takes at San Diego State. But they still challenged him and prepared him for a college-level workload, he said.

Lawmakers work to continue growth

Several state laws have been enacted in the past decade to expand dual enrollment in California. In 2015, established the College and Career Access Pathways program, allowing community colleges and high schools to enter into dual enrollment partnerships. These institutions bring the courses to students, as opposed to those students having to seek them out. The state streamlined the pathways program with the passage of in 2019, allowing students to submit fewer forms to enroll. , which is currently in committee, would, among other changes, increase the number of units that students in the program can take.

Based on PPIC research, students in the College and Career Access Pathways program now account for about 37% of dual enrollees. This program has a higher percentage of underrepresented students compared to other dual enrollment programs, in part because it eliminates some of the restrictions that can make it hard for schools to offer broad and barrier-free dual enrollment.

As dual enrollment continues to expand, it increases costs to California beyond the more than $700 million that the state has already invested. That’s because both community colleges and high school districts are typically both able to receive state funding for dual enrolled students, according to the

According to the statement from Christian, state leaders are working to increase dual enrollment access by expanding partnerships between high schools and colleges.

“My vision is to make dual enrollment a standard opportunity for all California students, not just an option for a select few, increasing equitable access to higher education and workforce-aligned learning,” Christian said in the statement.

Alana Althaus-Cressman, who runs the dual enrollment program at Golden Eagle Charter School, a K-12 school in Siskiyou County, markets the program to all students, not just those who already have a record of high achievement. She studied dual enrollment access for rural students for her graduate school dissertation at Sacramento State University, and started the early college high school program at Golden Eagle Charter in 2024. Students in the program take dual enrollment courses for part of the school day, and high school courses for the rest.

Althaus-Cressman said that because dual enrollment offers students a glimpse of college, it’s important that the classes aren’t only filled with students who already plan to attend college. Some high schools require minimum grade point averages or have other barriers to entry for dual enrollment, which Althaus-Cressman said can perpetuate inequalities.

The early college high school program enrolls about a third of Golden Eagle Charter’s ninth graders. Althaus-Cressman attributes this level of participation to extensive outreach, which included working with school staff to call the families of every incoming high school student to invite them to a dual enrollment orientation.

“We don’t want students to think that they aren’t the type of student for this program,” Althaus-Cressman said. “It’s for everybody.”

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This is the brilliance of the early college program, allowing all students access to the kind of free education everyone should have. My school, , provides a place to think, rise to the occasion of college, and become a better human being. 

My mother homeschooled me and my elder brothers through elementary and middle school. We couldn’t afford private school, but our parents did the best with the little they had. My mother would drive us around the greater Maryland area to take a variety of classes, exposing us to tons of different fields and building our interests in both STEM and the arts. I would not have had as strong an educational foundation if I had started out in the deeply flawed public school system.

When we reached high school, all three of us transferred into Bard, a four-year public school that offers two years of college coursework starting in junior year. In June, I will graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. 

At many schools, students have to pay for International Baccalaureate (IB) or for Advanced Placement (AP) exams to earn college credit. My program, one of 10 Bard Early College runs  around the country, offers both challenging material and college credits all for no cost, so students are spending their time learning about new ideas and skills. 

I have taken courses such as screenwriting, game development, and college physics to fulfill my AA credit requirements. However, “seminar” is the only class universal to early college scholars. I first encountered “F�����԰��Բ��ٱ𾱲�” as a junior, considering the theme of justice in companion with Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” This year, my professor introduced Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Theory: Reading Culture,” a collection of essays, as a lens for analyzing “Frankenstein.” Differing insights bloomed from the separate readings: What is Victor’s responsibility to the Creature? How was Victor himself “monsterized?” 

Furthermore, the early college program offers better preparation for the workforce. The National Center for Education Statistics’s report shows that adults with a higher degree of education also have better paying jobs.

For seniors who choose the college route immediately after high school, the early college program is a head start. They are already acclimated to the culture and jargon of college: registering for classes, using professors’ office hours, and advocating for themselves. 

For all early college students, transferable credits accelerate their post-secondary studies, saving money and allowing them to jump straight into more advanced courses of study. Because they have done two years’ worth of college-level work, these graduates will be more than ready to meet the demanding standards that colleges and universities are looking for. 

The found that 84% of its graduates returned for a second year of college, either at the same or at a different post-secondary institution. In 2022, the retention rate for Baltimore City Public Schools graduates averaged 49%, according to the .

Although monetary benefits have their place, my favorite aspect of the early college program is the emphasis on civic and intellectual engagement. Cultivating individuals with an innate sense of responsibility to their local and global community is far more critical than material success. 

In my first year at Bard, I resolved to focus solely on academics. The diversity in perspectives within the curriculum partnered with the method of relating the “classics” to the contemporary time was refreshing. However, silently sitting in the same classes everyday was Sisyphean. 

I only felt a sense of belonging when I started opening up to my teachers, who then helped me form relationships with my peers. For the duration of my time at Bard, I grew into a natural role as a teacher’s assistant and student mentor, realizing education was not just about satisfying curiosity, but about building relationships. 

It only became meaningful when I shared and engaged with others’ ideas, leading me to want to pursue teaching as a way of repaying my local community. In a nutshell, the early college program is truly about understanding humans and improving the world. 

A good education should be a right just by virtue of being human, not a privilege only afforded to some. The early college program makes this possible through its commitment to bringing college to high schoolers, preparing them for future success in their professional and personal lives. This is the path to creating a better, more illuminated, and empathetic society. 

LINCOLN – Soon after beginning her studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, McKenzie Murphy, then 19, applied for a part-time job.

She had graduated from high school only a few months earlier, but Murphy’s application also read “graduate, associates degree, Northeast Community College.”

Her interviewer didn’t believe that someone so young could have a two-year college degree.

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“Oh my gosh, when did you graduate?” Murphy was asked.

In May of 2023, Murphy received her diploma from Bancroft-Rosalie High School. But because she had participated in a state dual enrollment program, she also earned a college degree by taking college-level classes while in high school — classes that came with both college and high school credits.

During her last semester of high school, Murphy took 21 credit hours of such dual enrollment classes, completing a lot of general education courses normally taken at colleges or universities, but also learning about investing.

“I like to stay busy,” she said.

A strong head start

This year, more than 20,000 Nebraska high school students at more than 200 schools across the state are taking dual enrollment classes, with hundreds each year, like Murphy, graduating with two diplomas when they finish high school.

Students, including those home-schooled or in private schools, get discounted tuition when taking the classes. In two areas of the state, tuition and books are free, those served by Omaha-based Metropolitan Community College and Norfolk-centered Northeast Community College.

But the future affordability of the program for families statewide is being threatened by a reduction in funding.

The $5 million a year from the federal pandemic-related American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is going away, leaving only $3 million a year in state funding remaining.

On Thursday, several administrators of community colleges and Nebraska high schools joined a student and a representative of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry in testifying in favor of state legislation to keep the program affordable for high school students and their families. It would provide an additional $21 million over the next two years to continue.

Supporters of the additional funding praised the program as jump-starting student higher education, which they said leads to higher rates of college enrollment and earlier graduation. It also gets students into the workforce sooner, in high-need jobs like welding, teaching and health care, and is a proven way to reverse the “brain drain” exodus of educated young people from Nebraska.

“This maybe has been the most successful higher education partnership with K-12 education and business in all my years in education,” said Randy Schmailzl, the long-time president of Metropolitan Community College, which had nearly 9,000 dual enrollment students this year.

Students, schools embrace program

Mark Shepard, the superintendent of Fremont Public Schools, said the program had helped boost a local career and technical education program that has trained 200 student welders over the past nine years. Seventy of those trained are now working in well-paying, high-demand jobs in the state, he said.

“We view these programs as a true game changer for our state,” Shepard said of the technical training offered in Fremont through dual enrollment.

Murphy, whose family lives in Walthill, said she could not have taken the classes she did if she had been required to pay full tuition, which is $108 per credit hour at Northeast Community College.

At her high school, students have taken 790 credit hours of tuition-free dual enrollment classes this year with eight of the 18 members of the senior class on track to graduate with community college associate degrees, according to Jon Cerny, superintendent at Bancroft-Rosalie.

At Millard Public Schools, 2,200 students took dual enrollment classes last year, earning 26,000 credits. Superintendent John Schwartz said that added up to just short of $2 million in tuition that families didn’t have to pay.

The result, the two educators told members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, is that students complete college sooner and with less debt, and are able to graduate earlier and join the Nebraska workforce.

“It’s hard to find a better program that supports young people and our economy,” said Michael Johnson of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, who called the state’s shortage of workers “the number-one barrier to economic growth in the state.”

“This program presents a win-win-win opportunity for all of us,” said State Sen. Jason Prokop of Lincoln.

Bill offers replacement funding

His proposal, Legislative Bill 173, would provide $10 million for the dual enrollment program in 2025-26 and $11 million the following year.

Prokop said it exceeds the $5 million a year in ARPA funds that are going away because that money hasn’t covered all costs of the program, which are nearing $20 million a year. He said funding also hasn’t kept up with the 65% increase in students taking the courses.

“This program produces a pipeline of skilled labor that Nebraska employers desperately need,” the senator told the committee.

LB 173 wasn’t included in the preliminary budget recommendations of the Appropriations Committee, which is now taking testimony on its proposed budget. Senators are seeking to close a budget gap, leaving little funding for new spending.

Omaha State Sen. Christy Armendariz, a member of the committee, praised the program. But more than once, she asked whether other funds — rather than state taxpayer money — might be found to finance the dual enrollment program, or whether it could be more focused on families who could not afford to pay the tuition.

An official with Northeast Community College said that institution doesn’t have the funds to continue to offer free tuition on its own, and would have to start charging students. Schmailzl said that when Metro used to offer the classes at 50% of full tuition, it “cut a lot of people out.”

Shepard, the Fremont superintendent, said that 40 some businesses have contributed to the vocational programs in his district, but that ending free tuition, or having students fill out a waiver to get a tuition break, would present barriers.

No immediate action

The Appropriations Committee took no action on the bill after the public hearing on Thursday. It received 70 online comments in support of the bill and no opposition.

Murphy, the UNO student, wasn’t able to attend the public hearing. She’s working three part-time jobs as she pursues her pre-medicine degree in hopes of eventually becoming an ophthalmologist.

Besides saving money and getting a jump start on her university studies, she said dual enrollment and the rigors of college classes forced her to get more organized. She made a daily list of what she needed to get done each day.

It also helped her get hired.

“When you see someone who graduates with an associate degree, they realize that’s a hard-working person, Murphy said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Aaron Sanderford for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com.

In some versions of dual enrollment, students take college classes on top of their required high school course load. Requiring extra courses in order to reap the benefits of early college creates a disadvantage for those who work, help with siblings at home or have long commutes to and from school. It can also be a challenge for students already struggling to keep up with advanced courses.

In addition, while some states pay for or subsidize college courses for high schoolers, others make parents shoulder the financial burden. Postsecondary institutions may offer financial aid for economically disadvantaged high schoolers, as they do for their own students, but this adds just another hurdle to what should be a seamless early college experience.

Taken together, this lack of equal access to the time and financial resources needed to pay for, and do well in, college courses can skew participation and successful completion.

By contrast, concurrent enrollment — swapping a college course for a high school class instead of adding it on top of the regular course load — increases students’ opportunity to pay little to nothing for the advanced coursework while enhancing their readiness for college and a future of work.  

The terms dual and concurrent enrollment are often used interchangeably. But in their purest form, they are quite different. Policies that prioritize concurrent enrollment can have a substantial impact on student outcomes and postsecondary access. 

 In Arizona, for example, state law defines concurrent enrollment to mean a student enrolls in a state university or local community college course instead of the high school course he or she would otherwise take. It also requires that the student cost be as close to free as possible. 

In the context of public policy and program design, the seemingly semantic distinction between dual and concurrent enrollment can help improve lifetime outcomes and deliver a future-ready workforce.

Swapping college for high school courses also makes it easier to integrate workplace and college campus experiences into students’ normal school day. Instead of taking extra classes, students can spend their time in career-aligned projects and clubs or even commute to a nearby college to take courses on campus. 

In addition, concurrent credit can limit financial burdens on schools and districts by relieving them of the burdens of having to pay for doubled-up coursework, educators and space, as well as the costs of procuring college-equivalent programs in lieu of actual college courses.

A related policy change — simple, yet critical — would allow for the smooth transfer of earned concurrent credit. When students move from one high school to another, they must often retake courses or submit to a test to transfer college credits they have already earned. It’s a hiccup that adds cost across the system while slowing high school graduation or postsecondary attainment. States can ensure that these concurrent credits transfer when students move or otherwise change schools, and require that the new schools accept credits earned in these rigorous classes without onerous testing. Inefficient transfer policies not only threaten early college, but on-time high school graduation.

Concurrent enrollment can also respond to the increased demand from families and students for a transformed high school experience that is more relevant in today’s world. As the leader of a college prep network, I know firsthand how concurrent enrollment is meeting the demands of a new generation of parents and students.

Millennial parents are seeking ways to save on college costs, and their children want high school to be more engaging and relevant to their futures. Offering them postsecondary opportunities aligned to a career does just that.

Policymakers around the country should adopt equitable policies and funding for concurrent enrollment while helping educators implement these models. This will accelerate the efficiencies, economic mobility and work readiness that postsecondary learning provides. 

Large investments in dual enrollment have boosted interest in and access to postsecondary education. But after decades of implementation around the country, clarity is developing on how best to accelerate these gains, eliminate redundancies and deliver a future-ready workforce. Concurrent enrollment is that promising path forward.

That’s not the weighty middle-aged regret of lost dreams. It’s the lament of an Indianapolis high school senior who waited until late into his sophomore year – Gasp! – to take advantage of the college classes Indiana offers high schoolers for free or little cost.

Indiana is one of the few states where starting college as a high school sophomore makes you a late bloomer. The state ranks just behind Idaho in leading an early college credit movement, as states increasingly encourage high school students to take college classes, most often at community colleges.

In Idaho and Indiana, high school students make up more than half the students in community college classes, according to a. Iowa and Montana follow, with high schoolers representing more than 40% of community college enrollment, and eight other states comprising more than 30% of enrollment. 

On the other end, states such as Rhode Island and Connecticut haven’t joined the push, with high schoolers making up just 6% and 10% of community college students, respectively.

High school students have long been able to get a head start on college credits, traditionally by taking accelerated Advanced Placement classes and accompanying national Advanced Placement tests that started in the 1950s. Colleges then decide which credits to award based on the test scores. The College Board still offers 39 AP course guidelines and tests each year.

But earning early college credit has become more urgent the last few decades, as college costs have exploded and employers increasingly require study beyond high school. So states have seen dramatic increases in “early college,” “dual enrollment” or “dual credit” where high school students take classes on college campuses or high school teachers offer college classes.

Those approaches have allowed the number of high school students earning college credit to more than double since 2011 to 1.5 million a year, according to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. About 75% are enrolled in community colleges and the rest in four-year schools. Columbia researchers also estimate that more than a third of high schoolers take at least one college class before graduating.

“The pitch to communities and families and students is…get your first year of college out of the way in high school, or get it done in high school,” said researcher John Fink. “That’s a very compelling affordability pitch to students and families and obviously that’s an important issue on everybody’s mind.”

In a state as aggressive as Indiana, it’s normal for students like Torres, a student at l Believe Circle City High School, to be taking quantitative reasoning at Ivy Tech Community College this fall after taking psychology and introduction to criminology as a junior.

“I was kind of just in trouble all the time,” Torres said of himself as a freshman. “I didn’t really care about school stuff. It wasn’t until last year where I started actually doing my work and decided to take dual enrollment seriously.”

“Now I’m kind of trying to rush things,” said Torres, who wants to earn a degree before starting a career as a police officer. “I kind of wish I started early when they had given me the opportunity.”

Fink and other Columbia researchers reported in October that students taking college classes early are in college right after high school and are more likely to earn technical certificates, associates and bachelors degrees.

Taking classes directly through a college allows students to receive credits automatically, which is often more attractive to students than AP classes that rely on test scores to turn into credits, said Julie Edmunds, director of the Early College Resource Center at the University of North Carolina -Greensboro. 

“When all the college credit relies on passing a single exam on a single day, there are students who aren’t going to be successful in that kind of environment, and the proportion of AP takers that actually receive credit is much lower,” Edmunds said.

Other factors make taking college classes attractive to some students, including letting students intimidated by college test it out or colleges offering classes like advanced physics or foreign languages that their high schools can’t provide.

Still, though almost all states allow high schoolers to take college classes, there’s no consensus on how much to encourage and how to pay for it. A found a wide variation in the training teachers need to teach college classes, which students can take them and who pays for them.

Twenty-six states required high school students to meet a college’s entrance requirements first, the study found, while others do not. Nineteen states required students to have a recommendation from a school official, while others require students to pass tests or just let students decide on their own.

States also differ on which community college classes automatically count toward four-year degrees.

And states are divided on who pays for early credits, the study found, with states like Alabama and South Carolina requiring high school students to pay full tuition rates and states like Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington, D.C. covering the entire cost of the classes.

The Idaho State Board of Education attributes its high rate of community college enrollment on the state’s Advanced Opportunities program, which gives students up to $4,625 to pay for college classes.

And there are big differences too between students who just enroll in some college classes and those in so-called “early college high schools,” where college credit is prioritized and schools offer more specialized counseling and specific courses to help students succeed.

“If you’re expanding access to college,you can’t just throw everybody in college courses without giving them some level of support,” Edmunds said. 

In Indiana, where officials boast of being a national leader in early credits, having one single community college, Ivy Tech, with 45 campuses around the state under one umbrella, makes coordinating between schools easier.

The state also made course credits more valuable starting in 2013 by creating the , a collection of 30 college credits – some math, some English, some science, some social studies – guaranteed to transfer to any public institution in the state. That lets students know classes they take in high school will count at any public, and some private, school they choose.

The state also encourages high schools to offer classes in that core to students, so that some will complete it by graduation. 

Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said high schools slowly started making these classes available, with 84 of about 500 offering it three years ago. He said he and state education superintendent Katie Jenner, have pressed other schools to add it, growing that number to 275. 

That often means having teachers like Brooklyn Raines, an English teacher at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, teach Ivy Tech classes at the school. Though an employee of Indianapolis Public Schools, Raines had to apply to Ivy Tech as an instructor, attend early college training over the summer and have her curriculum for Introduction to Creative Writing approved by the community college’s English department.

She now teaches that class at Crispus Attucks three days a week on behalf of Ivy Tech. Though there can be worries that college level work is too much for high school students who are younger and haven’t learned as much as older students, Raines said her students are capable.

“Despite the stigma that they aren’t traditional college students, so they can’t retain the information, or they can’t keep up with the information, they prove time and time and again that they can,” Raines said.

Other times, students take Ivy Tech classes online. That’s how Layla Kpotufe, a fellow senior at the same high school as Torres, took a world politics class last year that has her debating whether to continue on a political science path or follow a previous interest in neuroscience.

Kpotufe, who has already earned an associates degree in general studies, said the Ivy Tech classes could cut her costs for her bachelors degree nearly in half.

“It would definitely take a lot of money off,” she said. “That’s why I think Ivy Tech is a really good opportunity for people, especially if you want to stay in state.”

Nearly half of Texas high school students who earn college credits are Hispanic, study says

Nearly half of all public high school students in Texas who earn college credits before they graduate are Hispanic, a new study found. That makes Texas a national leader in closing the gap between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students who participate in dual credit programs.

Hispanic students in dual credit classes, however, graduate from college at a lower rate compared to peers who were also in those programs, underscoring the need to strengthen the transition from high school to college for students of color.

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“We both have to focus on equalizing access to dual credit and providing dual credit students with the supports they need to go to college and complete college,” John Fink, a researcher with the Community College Research Center, said.

The Community College Research Center used National Student Clearinghouse data to look at high school juniors and seniors in 2015 who were enrolled in a dual credit course and in their first four years out of high school. Researchers selected that particular group of students to study the long term effects of dual credit on educational attainment. The researchers said it’s the first of its kind to break down dual credit outcomes by race, socioeconomic status and age by state.

The study found Black student participation, meanwhile, has lagged behind. Black students made up 8% of dual credit programs in the state, compared to 13% of Texas high school enrollment, according to a report on dual credit released Tuesday.

When Texas students made plans after high school, about half of dual enrollment students returned to the community college where they took dual credit classes for at least one term, according to the report’s findings.

The number of dual-credit students in Texas and around the country has ballooned in the past 10 years. Education leaders have seen dual credit programs as a way to encourage students to pursue higher education by giving them a chance to familiarize themselves with a college environment in high school. Earning college credit while still in high school has been linked to a higher educational attainment.

Texas legislators even changed to incentivize dual credit last year. Community colleges now get more money when high school students earn at least 15 college credit hours on their campuses. As part of the new funding system, state lawmakers also created the Financial Aid for Swift Transfer, or FAST, program, which gives community colleges extra money if they to low-income students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch.

In the past year alone, dual credit participation has grown at record numbers, with about 250,000 students taking advantage of the FAST program to take dual credit classes at no cost, Sarah Keyton, the interim commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, said in testimony in front of the Senate Higher Education Committee last month.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The proportion of Oregon’s community college enrollment made up of high schoolers has grown in recent years, and many aren’t taking classes on a campus. 

Overall, community college enrollment has plummeted in the past decade, but in 2021-2022 enrollment rose 3% and then grew another 4% in 2022-2023. High school students enrolled in community college classes made up nearly one-third of that growth. 

At five of the state’s 17 community colleges, high schoolers enrolled in college credit classes made up 20% or more of the colleges’ headcount during the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year of Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission data.

Many of the high schoolers enrolled in community college classes are taking a college-level class in their high school, taught by a high school teacher. Nevertheless, the colleges still collect tens of thousands of dollars from the state by counting these students in their enrollment. High school teachers instructing the classes often do not receive extra pay, or are paid a stipend by the school districts, according to interviews with community colleges, districts and a representative of the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Oregon Education Association. 

State data shows that more than 26,000 high schoolers accounted for 14% of the more than 193,000 students enrolled in classes at the state’s community colleges in 2022-23. That proportion is double what it was in 2010. Though both high school and adult enrollment have fluctuated over the years, high school enrollment in community college has remained far more stable than adult enrollment and, in recent years, was slightly higher than it was a decade ago. The number of adults enrolled in recent years was about half of what it was a decade ago.

And it’s not just in community colleges. Between 2011 and 2021, high schoolers taking dual-credit classes through a state four-year public university increased from more than 3,500 to more than 8,900. The number grew during the pandemic while most Oregon universities saw their overall enrollment drop.

Pathway to College

Jim Pinkard, the higher education commission’s director of postsecondary finance and capital, said dual enrollment for college credit on campus or in high school is positive for students, high schools and community colleges. Once graduated from high school, students are on track to finish college sooner and are spared from paying full price for general education courses at post-secondary institutions.

“We’re trying to encourage students who know from a young age that they want to go to college to get a four year degree,” Pinkard said. “If you know from a young age you want to be a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer – if we tell you how you can start as a junior or senior in high school and get the basics out of the way – that’s one or two or three classes you don’t have to pay for later, and hopefully it lowers the cost of your degree.”

Pinkard acknowledged that disparities exist in who is dual enrolled in college coursework. A 2023 from the commission found those enrolled are disproportionately white and female. Latino students are especially underrepresented among those dual enrolled.

And the share of high schoolers taking college-credit courses through five of Oregon’s community colleges was much higher than at others. At Blue Mountain Community College, Klamath Community College, Clackamas Community College, Columbia Gorge Community College and Lane Community College, high schoolers made up about 20% or more of the total enrollment. Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton had one of the largest shares, with dual-enrolled high schoolers accounting for nearly 30% of its enrollment.

Financial arrangements

Oregon is unusual in how it calculates per-pupil funding to community colleges, according to Pinkard of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission. Other states provide funding based on the cost to deliver a program. In some states, cost weights are used to reimburse colleges for students taking a welding course at a higher rate since that program costs more to deliver. In Oregon, community college funding per-pupil is based on the number of what's considered a "full-time equivalent" student.

When it comes to high schoolers dual enrolled, the state takes the number of hours each student spends in college-credit bearing classes, adds it up, then divides by 510 – the length of instructional hours over three terms for a student considered enrolled "full-time."

Ultimately, the state sends about $6,300 per full-time equivalent student to the colleges. 

The school districts and colleges also have financial agreements over how much a student should pay in fees per credit, how and when college instructors should mentor and collaborate with the high school teachers and how credits should transfer. Some high schoolers aren’t charged additional fees, while some pay $30 to $50 per credit. 

But each college-credit class that an Oregon high schooler enrolls in contributes to the college’s funding. Put it this way: If 20 students are taking a college-level, dual-credit biology course for one hour every day for one term at their high school, a class that's instructed by a high school teacher, the state calculus equates it to a bit more than 1,100 hours of instruction. The state divides that by 510 to reach the determination that it should fund the community college to the tune of about two full-time equivalent students. So that one dual-credit high school class brings about $13,600 to the college.

Because students are attending the class at the high school, the district also gets to count the student toward its enrollment, so districts don't lose any of the per-pupil funding they receive annually from the state school funding formula: about $13,800 per student, on average. Some community colleges work out revenue sharing agreements with the schools to give the public school teachers some of the higher education funding from the state, but some don't. 

"Their cost in instructing that student is de minimis if they’re not paying that high school instructor," Pinkard said. 

The bulk of students from Pendleton High School in east Oregon who receive dual credit through Blue Mountain Community College take their classes at the high school, with a high school teacher. The high school does not get any extra money for that, and teachers do not get any additional compensation, according to Matt Yoshioka, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment at Pendleton High School. 

Blue Mountain does pay for the high school to employ Mandy Oyama, a college and career counselor, and it pays for faculty to mentor high school instructors and help administer courses and grading. The rest of the extra money Blue Mountain gets from the high school enrollment goes into its general fund, according to the college’s president, Mark Browning. 

Browning said the college is spending money to make to dual enrollment work, not raking it in. Between paying for college faculty to mentor high school teachers and develop courses, providing transcripts and accreditation, the costs add up, he said.

“Whatever the HECC sends us does not cover the cost of instruction for our students. Take the total number of credits we teach, divided by $17.4 million – what our total budget is – that's what the cost of instruction is,” he said. This year, according to Browning, HECC appropriated $4 million in per-pupil funding to Blue Mountain.

Browning said Oregon is far behind other states like Washington and Idaho, where the state government pays for dedicated post-secondary education options in high schools. In both Washington and Idaho, the state pays for the instructors who teach these college-credit courses in the high schools, and it pays for the staff who train teachers, develop courses and coordinate everything on the college’s side.

“In Oregon, we're just doing it all out of hide,” Browning said. “There are ways to do it better.”

Pinkard agreed that overall the deals between colleges and high schools for dual credit aren’t wildly lucrative for the colleges, but he said, they help subsidize the college's other programs, such as adult basic education classes in math and reading that cost as little as $25 per credit at most community colleges. 

“Most of them are not making a helluva lot of money on it,” Pinkard said. “But, there must be some that are making enough, because otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden said North Carolina is a leader when it comes to providing opportunities for students to earn college credit and connect to careers while still in high school. 

Dr. Biden visited North Carolina April 15 to discuss innovative learning programs, like dual enrollment, that are bridging gaps between the classroom and careers.

The visit is part of President Biden’s .

In his , the president allocated $7.2 billion to establish or expand programs that would allow students to earn postsecondary credits through career-connected dual enrollment while still in high school. 

According to a statement from the Office of the First Lady, “The funds would be provided as matching dollars to states to initiate or expand efforts to spur greater enrollment in dual enrollment programs.”

The First Lady’s North Carolina visit included a stop at where she met with educators and students to learn about the college’s dual enrollment efforts. Following the briefing, Dr. Biden visited Pitt’s biotechnology lab and automotive bay and heard from high school students working toward postsecondary credentials.

Dr. Biden then visited alongside Gov. Roy Cooper.

Before welcoming the First Lady to the podium, Gov. Cooper explained how the state’s dual enrollment program,  (CCP), is a tool to help high school students fast track their education and career goals. “That’s why we’re all here today,” Dr Biden said. “North Carolina has been a leader in providing those (dual enrollment) opportunities and is exemplary in transforming high school into a place that prepares students for jobs.” 

More than across North Carolina participated in CCP during the 2022-23 academic year. 

A showed dual enrollment was up 12% from the previous year. The most notable increase was across the Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathway – jumping 21% from the last academic year. The CTE pathway is often aligned with high-skill and high-demand jobs, providing opportunities for students to learn a variety of academic and technical skills.

After her remarks, Dr. Biden and Gov. Cooper joined a panel of educators and dually enrolled high school students from three North Carolina community colleges to discuss their experiences with CCP. 

Panelists highlighted how CCP is a chance to identify career interests and begin earning college credit that will help them in a future job. The four students on the panel are taking college courses aligned with various careers, including EMT certification, business administration, electrical engineering, manufacturing, and computer science.

The students said CCP has given them opportunities to explore careers and the confidence that they could succeed in a college setting.  

“I can be successful in these types of environments,” said Giovanni Robinson, a dually-enrolled student at GTCC. 

As for connecting students to careers, community colleges are doubling down on their efforts to support students by providing opportunities to become pre-apprentices.

and , both represented on the panel, are among many of the state’s community colleges that are coordinating CCP in ways that meet the needs of industry in their communities. 

is one example of cross-sector partnerships that bring together K-12 districts, community colleges, and employers. It’s an approach that leverages dual enrollment and the state’s apprenticeship program to carve out pathways for students to earn college credit, income, and skilled training. 

In her closing remarks, panel moderator Amy Loyd, assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education, thanked the audience and expressed gratitude for the chance to learn from the state. 

“We really are delighted to learn from North Carolina and lift up the great work of your great state as a model and exemplar for all of our country to learn from as we’re thinking about how we create career pathways for all young people,” Loyd said.

North Carolina’s Career and College Promise explained

Career and College Promise (CCP) is a dual enrollment program that allows high school students to take college courses tuition-free in North Carolina. 

CCP includes three pathways: college transfer, career and technical education (CTE), and Cooperative Innovative High Schools (CIHS), which include early colleges. The pathways are structured and provide students opportunities to earn credits that often lead to certificates and associate degrees.  

The state has long been a leader in dual enrollment programs — dating back over 30 years when the first iteration of the program launched.

When CCP was , it was done in such a way that students could earn a credential in less time than would normally be required. And regardless of their path – obtaining a degree, earning college transfer credits, or pursuing a credential to transition to the workforce – students would save time and money, both of which are linked to an increased . 

Research has consistently found that Career and College Promise benefits students, parents, and North Carolina as a whole.

A showed students who participated in CCP had higher high school graduation rates and higher postsecondary enrollment rates than those who did not. The study compared CCP students to a similar group of students who did not participate in CCP over seven years.

Students in college transfer or CTE pathways were 9% more likely to enroll in a North Carolina public college after high school. CIHS students were 27% more likely to enroll in a North Carolina public college after graduating.

The study also found that economically disadvantaged students and those from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups benefited most from CCP. You can read more about CCP below.

Photo highlights

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

This summer, Washington’s high schoolers will be able to get an even earlier start on college courses.

That’s because of a bill led by Sen. Brad Hawkins, R-Wenatchee, which expands the state’s popular . Running Start has allowed Washington’s high school juniors and seniors to earn college credit tuition-free since the early 1990s.

Under Hawkins’ measure, incoming 11th graders will be allowed to take college courses and earn up to 10 credits over the summer. The legislation sailed through both legislative chambers and Gov. Jay Inslee signed it into law in late March.

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“I’ve been calling my bill a ‘Walking Start to Running Start’ because it will ease students into their college experience, minimize their debt, and get them a bit closer to earning their degrees,” Hawkins said in March.

The bill goes into effect in June, in time for this year’s cohort of 10th grade graduates to enroll, Hawkins said in an email to the Standard. Hawkins’ local community college, Wenatchee Valley College, is currently working on enrollment forms and other information related to implementing the new law.

Faimous Harrison, Wenatchee Valley College’s president, said the program helps students transition into college in a less intimidating environment and gives them a jump on figuring out a career path.

“When we talk about the value of a degree, one of the concerns is there are so many people who get all the financial debt from going to school and then they can’t find jobs or they’re not interested in that field,” Harrison said.

“Running Start also creates opportunities for early exploration. It also offers opportunities to meet with different people, learn about different fields,” Harrison said.

School districts must also provide information about Running Start summer enrollment opportunities to students and their families under the new law. Students can take part-time or full-time classes and some earn associate’s degrees by the time they graduate high school.

Tuition is covered by the student’s home school district and largely paid for through state funding, although Running Start students may be on the hook for textbooks, transportation and other fees that come with college classes.

The new law is also an expansion of summer Running Start courses, which became available to 11th and 12th graders in 2021 through a state-run . That program showed “promising results:” Participating colleges reported an average completion rate of 90% and an 87% summer-to-fall Running Start retention rate.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

In January, the surveyed more than 1,600 public K-12 schools from every state and the District of Columbia — where 53 percent in low poverty neighborhoods said they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college and 52 percent said the same for the workforce.

But public school educators in high poverty neighborhoods were lower at 33 and 43 percent respectively.

“If they’re assessing themselves based on the post-graduation success of their students, it makes sense why they feel they’re not doing as well,” said Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the .

Wyner said the college enrollment rate of high school students from low-income backgrounds is generally less than those from higher income areas, and they end up facing lower wages long-term if they go directly into the workforce.

“While it’s discouraging that schools serving lower income and more diverse students believe they’re not doing as good a job, something they can do about it appears in the study,” he added, noting the correlation between offering more advanced coursework — such as Advanced Placement and dual enrollment — and their perception of how they prepare high school students for the next stage of their lives.

The survey, which serves as part of the latest tracking the pandemic’s impact on public education, asked educators how they viewed their preparation of high school students for college and the workforce on a five-point scale — from “poor” to “excellent.”

About 47 percent said they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college and 50 percent said the same for the workforce.

“I hope this data will spark important conversations that lead to improved opportunities for all students,” said NCES commissioner Peggy Carr in a statement.

Here are four things to know about the survey findings:

1. Public school educators in high poverty neighborhoods with more students of color were less likely to say they’re preparing students well for college and the workforce.

The report found public schools in low poverty neighborhoods were more likely to say they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college compared to those in high poverty neighborhoods — a difference of 53 and 33 percent respectively.

Statistics were similar about the workforce — a difference of 52 and 43 percent respectively.

The report also found public schools with fewer students of color were more likely to say they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college compared to those with a majority — a difference of 57 and 36 percent respectively.

Statistics were similar about the workforce — a difference of 55 and 41 percent respectively.

Wyner said the contrast based on poverty level and the number of students of color comes from the disproportionate access to advanced coursework.

“We’ve known for a long time that AP access is inequitable, but the fact that dual enrollment access is also inequitable…is troubling,” Wyner said.

The study found 73 percent of public schools offered at least one of the following: Advanced Placement, Pre-Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or dual enrollment courses.

About 76 percent of public schools in low poverty neighborhoods offered advanced coursework compared to 65 percent of those in high poverty neighborhoods.

But the difference was greater based on the number of students of color.

About 84 percent of public schools with fewer students of color offered advanced coursework compared to 65 percent of those with a majority.

“It’s a little bit of a surprise because [a majority] of those courses are offered by community colleges which are often located in areas that serve high need high school students,” Wyner said. 

“So you would think that those partnerships would be stronger and enable expanded access to advanced courses — but they don’t.”

2. Public school educators with smaller student populations were less likely to say they’re preparing students well for college and the workforce.

Public schools with less than 300 students were the least likely to say they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college and the workforce compared to those with a larger population.

Wyner said this is because public schools with fewer students are generally located in less densely populated areas, such as towns and rural areas, with less resources and proximity to other educational institutions.

“Some of this has to do with urbanicity,” Wyner said. “In some communities, economic opportunity is limited…so high school students, no matter how well-prepared, may not readily be able to find a job if they’re staying in these areas.”

3. Public school educators in towns were less likely to say they’re preparing students well for college — but those in cities had similar attitudes for the workforce.

Public schools in towns were the least likely to say they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college compared to those in cities, suburbs or rural areas.

But those in cities were the least likely to have the same attitude about preparing students for the workforce.

Wyner said the local economies are likely driving these perceptions — with public schools in towns and rural areas having a higher number of blue collar jobs compared to cities having a higher number of college opportunities.

“The reality is that schools that are in knowledge-based economies, which tend to be centered in cities, will consider themselves more capable of preparing students for a liberal arts education whereas schools in areas with a higher percentage of jobs in agriculture, manufacturing or some of the more blue collar jobs will view themselves as stronger in preparing students for the workforce,” Wyner said.

“There are also many parts of the country that have long traditions of having jobs that don’t require postsecondary training,” he added, pointing to the lingering impact of careers in the automotive, steel mill and manufacturing industries.

4. Public school educators in the Midwest were less likely to say they’re preparing students well for college — but those in the West had similar attitudes for the workforce. 

Public schools in the Midwest were the least likely to say they do a “very good” or “excellent” job preparing students for college compared to those in the Northeast, South and West.

But those in the West were the least likely to have the same attitude about preparing students for the workforce.

“It makes sense why we see a correlation between location, morality and postsecondary and employment opportunities for students,” Wyner said.

“This study should offer guidance to [public schools] to find the right ways to prepare students for college and the workforce…and give them that sense of self-efficacy that they know what’s right for them.”

Hundreds of higher education leaders across the country gathered virtually on Feb. 28-29 for hosted by several North Carolina agencies — the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS), the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s , and the national

The conference included more than 30 sessions focused on the benefits of dual enrollment, the need for equity, and strategies to improve and expand programs.

“This is the second conference focused on the role of dual enrollment in unlocking student potential and expanding access to postsecondary education in our state and across the country,” said NCCCS President Dr. Jeff Cox. “We are a leader in the country in dual enrollment, but there’s a lot of interest to expand even further.”

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In North Carolina, dual enrollment opportunities for high school students have existed for more than 30 years. The state’s dual enrollment program, , was created in 2011 to structured opportunities for high school students to earn college credits tuition-free that “lead to a certificate, diploma, or degree as well as provide entry-level jobs skills.”

In recent years, the NCCCS has focused on expanding and strengthening CCP, which includes three pathways: college transfer, career and technical education (CTE), and Cooperative Innovative High Schools (CIHS). The system’s includes high school enrollment as a focus of increasing access and enrollment across the state.

At the same time, participation in dual enrollment programs has increased. Last school year, the NCCCS served over 78,000 students in its dual enrollment programs during 2022-23, Cox said. CCP participation among N.C. high schoolers from 6% in 2014-15 to 12% in 2020-21.

State Superintendent Catherine Truitt said dual enrollment is an important part of student success. She said the community college system is crucial to her work of “improving the state’s public schools, expanding innovation, and ensuring that all students are prepared to be enrolled, enlisted, or employed when they graduate.”

Keynote speaker Dr. Karen Stout, president and chief executive officer of , urged conference attendees to “rethink access” to dual enrollment.

“Dual enrollment is the fastest-growing segment of community college enrollment,” she said. “We must stretch the boundaries of our thinking about the design of our dual enrollment programs and about the range of partnerships we might develop with K-12 partners to help more students thrive — who without these programs, would never have found their way to college in the first place.”

Stout raised a few themes for participants to think about over the two-day conference.

• The importance of CTE pathways to increase equitable access to dual enrollment.
• Aligning dual enrollment programs with other college offerings in a more strategic manner.
• Articulating a shared vision among partners and then creating a work plan to achieve desired outcomes.
• Focusing on equitable expansion. Specifically, Stout recommended creating culturally-focused and community-specific outreach, engaging prospective students earlier, and bringing advising/classes to students.

“Equity must be at the center of the work to strengthen dual enrollment,” she said. “There is much for us to do, and this is important work at a critical moment. Dual enrollment… must become a centerpiece to our equitable student success agenda.”

Here’s a look at some of the main takeaways from the conference. The graphic below also includes an overview of the three CCP pathways in North Carolina.

Impacts of dual enrollment

Overall, data shows positive impacts of dual enrollment, said Dr. Julie Edmunds, the director of the Early College Research Center at UNC-Greensboro’s SERVE.

that CCP programs allow participants to earn postsecondary credentials at higher rates than their peers — with larger benefits for economically disadvantaged students. Edmunds said economically disadvantaged students benefit most in attaining bachelor’s degrees.

Edmunds presented data on college-level credits earned by the end of 12th grade among CCP participants and their peers. You can see that data in the chart below.

“If you don’t see impacts on these college credits, then your program isn’t really doing anything at all,” Edmunds said. “But as you can see from this chart, CCP students earn many more college credits than students in the comparison groups.”

She noted that CIHS involvement has the largest impact on postsecondary attainment among the pathways.

Other benefits of CCP include higher graduation rates and a higher likelihood to earn a credential. That includes any postsecondary credential, certificate, associate degree, and bachelor’s degree.

Among all pathways and credentials, the only negative impact was among CTE participants. Students who participated in CTE were slightly less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their peers, Edmunds said.

“This seems to suggest that some students may have been steered away from earning a bachelor’s degree. Is this good, or is this bad?” Edmunds said. “It could be good if students might have learned that their desired career did not require a bachelor’s degree, and therefore they didn’t need to go to a four-year institution. However, we also know that students with bachelor’s degrees earn more over the long haul than students without bachelor’s degrees.”

Rural students also tend to benefit more from CCP participation, Edmunds said.

“(This is) mostly because they don’t have as many alternative options to them for high-level course taking,” she said.

Dr. Holley Nichols presented on benefits for rural students taking dual enrollment math courses.

North Carolina saw a 45% increase in math dual enrollment courses taken between 2017 and 2022, according to the Belk Center’s research.

“We really saw this incredible uptick that was much sharper than overall engagement in dual enrollment, in math,” said Nichols, the Belk Center’s associate director of research and evaluation.

The center analyzed participation in math dual enrollment courses across the state, focusing on highly transferrable courses like statistical methods, pre-calculus/algebra, and calculus.

They found that math dual enrollment participation was roughly 25% across the board in Tier 1 counties, as . Each year, the department ranks counties on their economic well-being, with 1 being the most economically distressed and 3 being the least economically distressed.

In rural counties specifically, the rate of participation in math dual enrollment was often higher. This could be due to generally higher rates of math teacher vacancies in rural areas, Nichols said.

In some counties, the rate of math dual enrollment participation was up to 50%, Nichols said.

“In rural areas, the importance of these math dual enrollment classes cannot be underestimated,” Nichols said. “For a lot of these high schools, that is the chance to take upper-level math.”

Despite all the benefits CCP offers, access to dual enrollment is not equitably distributed, conference speakers said. Here is a look at what research says about increasing the equity of dual enrollment.

Equitable expansion

While dual enrollment is particularly beneficial for economically-disadvantaged students, gaps exist in participation and attainment. Those gaps vary across dual enrollment pathways, speakers said, but generally impact Black, Hispanic, and male student populations.

In the college transfer pathway, Edmunds said an additional gap exists among economically disadvantaged students.

Many gaps exist because colleges are not intentional about outreach, she said.

“When you just sort of make an opportunity available to people, who are the people who are going to take advantage of that?” Edmunds said. “Well, they’re going to be the people that are already super motivated… or their parents are super motivated. People who come with all of those inherent supports and advantages, those are going to be the people who are going to take advantage of it first.”

Conference speakers, including Edmunds, emphasized several strategies to advance equity in dual enrollment: the importance of strong K-12 partnerships, academic and non-academic supports, and early career/academic exploration.

Edmunds also shared several recommendations on expanding access to dual enrollment, included below.

Sarah Griffin, a research associate with Columbia University’s , shared the center’s equity framework, dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP).

DEEP is “a research-based framework for rethinking dual enrollment as a more equitable on-ramp to college programs of study that lead to family-supporting, career-path jobs for students who might not otherwise pursue education after college,” per

“In general, the expansion of dual enrollment has been really positive for students and communities,” Griffin said.

However, in addition to gaps in access, some dual enrollment programs also lack structured guidance for students. Griffin said the DEEP framework seeks to mitigate both challenges.

“So the DEEP research was motivated by our interest in understanding who was getting access to dual enrollment,” she said. “But also what were students getting access to, in terms of their dual enrollment programs and how they were being implemented.”

Here’s a look at the main components of the DEEP framework:

Leaders from Ohio’s and also presented on their efforts to address food insecurity among dual enrollment students.

“Why should we address food insecurity among dual enrollment students?” asked Columbus State K-12 Partnerships Director Kimberly Connell. “Because when students don’t have access to adequate food, it impacts their concentration, their memory, their mood, and their motor skills. Those are things that are all important for students to be successful.”

In fall 2021, the college started a lunch card distribution program to address food insecurity. Students who take in-person courses are eligible to receive lunch cards based on the number of days they are on campus for class.

Presenters said the program has addressed an important need. During the first year of the program, the college distributed 309 lunch cards to 10 students, per the presentation. By fall 2023, that amount increased to 1,088 lunch cards to 48 students.

“Students cannot achieve self actualization if their basic needs are not met,” Connell said.

Speakers lifted up a number of other strategies for increasing equity in dual enrollment, listed below.

• Build resources for under-resourced schools with the most limited capacity.
• Invest time and resources.
• Strengthen and streamline dual enrollment processes.
• Promote student success once students have enrolled in courses.
• Attend community and school events to explain the opportunities of dual enrollment, and market that message well.
• Prioritize authentic connections between staff and students, which requires capacity and strong team vision.

Dr. Jason Taylor, an associate professor at the University of Utah’s Department of Educational Leadership, stressed the importance of program vision and planning.

“We really need to be looking at the relationship between design and outcomes,” Taylor said. “How we design our programs and the purpose of our programs matters quite a bit in terms of what we might need to consider for equitable outcomes.”

Lessons from early colleges

Throughout the conference, several panels and speakers highlighted the strengths of the early college model.

“The early college is a really great setting to explore these other ideas about how to support students in dual enrollment courses more effectively,” said Dr. Julie Edmunds, with the Early College Research Center.

In North Carolina, early colleges fall under the pathway, which also includes middle colleges and STEM and career academies. CIHS students account for 31% of those enrolled across the three CCP programs in the state.

In order to address equity gaps in dual enrollment,  states that schools must target one of the following three student populations:

1. First-generation college students.
2. High school students who are at risk of dropping out.
3. High school students who would benefit from accelerated instruction.

Nationally, there are about 1,100 early colleges, according to research presented by . That research identifies North Carolina as a national leader of early college programs, . Here’s a map of those programs across the state.

RTI Senior Research Education Analyst Dr. Elizabeth Glennie said early colleges can help mitigate barriers to college. Glennie discussed financial, academic, cultural, and logistical barriers.

Early colleges help prepare students for the rigor and culture of college. They also provide support in applying for college, which is particularly important for first-generation students. Perhaps most importantly, Glennie said, early colleges provide students with college courses for no cost.

Dr. Frank McKay, an education consultant with RTI, spoke about the characteristics of early colleges.

In North Carolina, early colleges have a cap of 100 students per grade. N.C. early colleges serve students in grades 9-13, which allows students to remain in school for a fifth year to earn their associate degree.

“If you’ve seen one early college, you’ve seen one early college, because they’re such unique implementations,” McKay said. “The kind of sweet spot and secret of success is the combination of the rigorous (college) program and curriculum, tied with really strong student supports.”

Principal Matt Bristow-Smith spoke about how to help dual enrollment students succeed.

“One of the way you grow programs is by creating something successful that people want to be a part of, and that they can see themselves in,” Bristow-Smith said. “Giving folks hope and inspiration is really important, and someone needs to be the ‘moral cheerleader’ of your school… And the second piece is you need to have a plan for folks.”

Lisa Cummings, principal of , said “intentional supports” are crucial for student success.

Wake Early College of Health and Sciences opened in 2006 as the first early college in Wake County and focuses on careers in health sciences. Seventy percent of the school’s students are first-generation students or from underrepresented backgrounds.

Last year, 80% of their graduates were accepted and planned to attend four-year universities, Cummings said.

Here are other student success strategies Cummings shared:

• Strategic advising, front-loaded when students first arrive.
• Purposeful scheduling.
• Targeted courses.
• Interventions inside and outside the classroom.

Future research, work

Keynote speaker Dr. Karen Stout left conference attendees with several questions on which to reflect:

• Does dual enrollment help the many, many students who aspire to transfer into a bachelor’s program, but never do?
• Do our programs lead not only to good, in-demand jobs, but also put students on a pathway to a meaningful career over the long-term?
• Do our programs have positive social, economic, and cultural impacts on our communities?

Speakers also lifted up the need for strong data collection and reevaluation of programs.

The Early College Research Center is researching the impact of dual enrollment on employment and earnings, Edmunds said, and how the pandemic impacted students’ postsecondary choices and performance.

On Thursday afternoon, attendees also heard about the role of policy and legislation in dual enrollment expansion.

Those panelists emphasized the need for strong data, design, and partnerships. They also cautioned against broadly expanding all programs and advocated instead for focusing on impactful programs and practices.

Finally, the panel encouraged conference attendees to remain engaged in the policy conversations in their prospective states.

“We’re at a critical point,” said panel facilitator Dr. Joel Vargas, vice president of . “So we really need all of you champions out there.”

Everyone has a leadership role to play, Achieving the Dream’s Nick Mathern said during the conference’s closing remarks. It will take all stakeholders to reach educational attainment goals and close equity gaps, he said.

“Talk to the students and families in your community about what the value proposition for higher education looks like to them,” said Mathern, Achieving the Dream’s executive director of K–12 partnerships. “I’ve been inspired by the excellent work shared by so many of you around the country. And I’m eager to see what the collective impact of our continued work will be.”

Starting the week of March 4, you can view session recordings on after creating an account. After 30 days, those recordings will be moved to YouTube, under the handle @DE24DualEnrollmentConference.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Eighty-nine Connecticut school districts will receive thousands of dollars of additional funding to expand their dual credit programs, which offer students both high school and college credit, state officials announced Tuesday morning.

“I think what we’re trying to do with these dual [credit programs], or trying to do with internships, and what we’re trying to do with apprentice programs … is we’re trying to make education real and give it a sense of purpose for young people,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “[These courses can] give a sneak preview of what happens next, in terms of confidence and sense of direction.”

About $3.8 million  among the chosen districts, with most of the funding designated to those that serve high percentages of students of color, including Bridgeport, Danbury, East Hartford, Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, Waterbury and CREC Magnet Schools, which received $90,000 grants each.

“It’s really about increasing access for all students. I think there are clearly disproportionalities in terms of students of color and students from low-income families, so our grant program that we have launched now is focused explicitly on not just increasing participation but losing those disparities as well,” said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, the chief performance officer for the state’s Department of Education. “The grant program helps with defraying district planning costs and works with institutional direct partners to make the work happen. … Long term, we do need to think about, as a state, supporting the costs involved, even though the costs are minimal for some families.”

Earlier this year, the CT Mirror reported how students of color were being , another type of class that offers college credit if students pass a test at the end of the year. Experts, who said the disparities are often exacerbated in the same classroom or school because of school climate or systemic structures, also said college-level classes could become more equitable by shifting from AP into more dual-credit classes.

Three students interviewed at the time, all recent graduates of Wilby High School in Waterbury, said they weren’t offered dual credit courses at their school.

On Tuesday, Gopalakrishnan said “almost all” high schools “have some availability” of dual-credit courses through partnerships among the education department, individual high schools and UConn and CT State, but was unable to immediately answer how many didn’t offer these classes. 

At least 17 schools have suppressed data on the number of students who earned at least three college credits through dual enrollment during the 2022-23 school year, according to state data. Data is typically suppressed for confidentiality reasons because the number of students participating is low. 

Wilby was one of those schools. 

Other high schools like New Milford High only had seven of 602 upperclassmen, or 1.2%, obtaining at least three college credits through dual-enrollment.

Some schools in districts that are expected to receive funding like Danbury High School, Hartford Public High School and Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk reported under 10% of students were receiving college credit through dual-enrollment. 

Meanwhile, in other districts, like Colchester, Weston and Westport, the rate is around 82%.

In Ansonia, where about 40% of the high school’s upperclassmen earned three college credits or more, Superintendent Joseph DiBacco attested to the impact of those courses.

“Just last year, the senior class at Ansonia High School had 900 university credits they acquired,” DiBacco said at the state’s press conference Tuesday.

DiBacco was joined by two students, both of whom said they began taking these courses when they were underclassmen.

“I feel really prepared for college, and I really think that gave me a step forward,” said Paul Palmer, a senior at the high school. “It also saves a lot of money, and that’s my main focus. … I wouldn’t be able to do that without all of these partnerships.”

The state said grant funds are expected to be used mainly for:

• Stipends for high school teachers and college faculty to create course work that lines up with college expectations;

• Tuition reimbursement for high school teachers who need to complete additional training to teach these courses;

• Purchasing additional equipment for fields like health care, technology, etc.;

• Developing strategies to engage more students and explain “the benefits of earning college credit,” including saving money and skipping general education courses.

This story was originally published in