EP 144: State-Level Approaches to Dual Enrollment: California and Texas

It's really important to sort of lead with quality and what is sort of that college level expectation, but then how are we going to expand the supports for students who are new college learners, who are maybe sort of on the margins of is college for me. I'm not sure, but if they got into the right course that's taught really well, that's challenging, but they have the right supports to be successful. It really can be this transformative moment of I can do college. It is student that is identified through the state, TEA, Texas Education Agency as free or reduced lunch participant is allowed to take dual credit classes free of charge, no tuition fees, books, anything. That's the reverse that we get at the community college from the state. I love it that Texas uses dual credit as kind of how what they call their program because in California we can't because high school students don't automatically get high school credit for their dual enrollment courses making the changes to automate a awarding both K12 and college credit is necessary to improve the efficiency of the system. This is in the know with ACCT, the voice of community college leaders. I'm Kayleigh Woods. In this second installment of ACCT's dual enrollment dual credit series, consultant Amy Ellen Duke Benfield sits down with higher end leaders from Texas and California to compare state programs and policies and strategize ways to make systems more effective for students. I'm your guest host, Amy Ellen Duke Benfield who is an independent consultant to ACCT. Today we're diving into dual enrollment. A dual enrollment course or some call it dual credit is a college course taken by a high school student for which the student earns both college and high school credit simultaneously. Dual credit courses are taught by full time or adjunct college faculty members either at college campuses, at area high schools or online. Some courses taught at the high school campuses may be taught by high school teachers who have comparable credentials and academic preparation as college faculty members. In fall 2024 the Association of Community College Trustees launched a new project exploring innovative state policies for building dual enrollment pathways. The project focuses primarily on California's dual enrollment pathways initiatives and Texas's House Bill 8 which introduced a new community college funding formula that includes incentives for dual enrollment pathways and makes dual enrollment free to low cost. State to cross the country or in various phases of considering similar policy shifts to incentivize innovative dual enrollment strategies. In this episode of In the Now we explore why dual enrollment is a game changer for low income and underserved students. How policy reforms in Texas and California have expanded access and opportunity examples of how colleges and school districts are putting these policies into practice and what other states can learn from Texas and California. Today we are joined by Marissa Moreno from Lee College in Texas where she is the associate vice president of transfer and educational partnerships. Olga Rodriguez comes to us from the Public Policy Institute of California where she is the director of the Higher Education Center in a senior fellow. We're also joined today by John Fink who joins us from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College where he is a senior research associate. I'll have written extensively about dual enrollment. So to kick us off why is dual enrollment such a powerful strategy for increasing college access and success particularly for low income first generation and historically underserved students. Thanks Amy. I'll jump in here and just say thanks so much for having us on. It's good to be with you all. I wanted to sort of lay a couple of data points that really set up why there just really is an important opportunity here with community colleges serving high school students as a way to grow and expand college access and career opportunity. The first is this that dual enrollment with its many different names and shapes and sizes across our country is big and growing and really significant for community colleges. You know most recent count is that there's about two and a half million high school students enrolled in higher education through dual enrollment programs. About three quarters of that is that community colleges and it's it's a doubled in the last decade. So it's growing at a pretty fast clip and it's really significant for community college enrollments which otherwise have been declining even before the pandemic and so now high school students make up about a fifth of community college and role ease and in ten states it's a third of community college enrollments and I was just looking at it today at 37 community colleges across the country it's more than half of enrollment. So this is large and a significant for community colleges I think on net this has really been a good thing for students and communities. There's been decades of research showing positive effects on high school completion but also college enrollment and college completion. Both large descriptive studies like we've done looking at national data like we showed in 41 states students entering with dual enrollment experience complete at higher rates than students who are not entering higher ed with dual enrollment experience but also very rigorous evaluations that control for student characteristics and show not only does dual enrollment benefit students but it in particular benefits black and Latino and low-income students and students who otherwise may have been struggling academically in those ninth and tenth grade years but sort of turned around with dual enrollment. So it has these benefits but where there's opportunities for improvement is just when we look at who's getting access to dual enrollment programs there just are consistent gaps by race by income for English learning which learners for students with disabilities and other other groups in terms of access and participation rates but I think one thing that is encouraging is that like if you look at that for every school district across the country we did find about one in five school districts don't have any of these gaps in access especially in particular by race and we did see in one state Massachusetts there was equal representation of black students in dual enrollment compared to their K-12 so I think it some of that data does sort of raise questions around you know what are the policies that are working better to realize the potential here what are the practices that colleges are implementing with their K-12 partners and that's the sort of research that that we've been doing at CCRC. So I think I think one of the top issue on families and students right now is college affordability and student debt and concerns around that and dual enrollment is really a powerful strategy to kind of address some of these issues because for many access to dual enrollment is free so they get access to free college credits and often they may also cover books and other fees so it addresses this major hurdle that might prevent some students from making the transition into higher ed and especially when we think about intentional course selection making sure that the courses that are being offered and that students take meet key graduation requirements as key and can support a quicker time to completion and also kind of it allows especially for first-gen students who can ask their parents what it's like to be a college student it gives them access to the rigor and the experience to college courses and it kind of allows them to experience and have support from both the high schools and college to really realize that they can do it and so hopefully warm up aspirations. So yeah I think those are other kind of key reasons why dual enrollment is such a powerful strategy. So Marissa could you please weigh in since you're at the institutional level right now what are some of the most important components of a high-quality dual enrollment program? Academic rigor for sure. Two Johns point you know you have instructors that teach that are high school teachers that are qualified to teach but they teach it the high school not necessarily on our campus so making sure that our faculty on our side are ensuring that the instruction is intact and that it's not becoming a high school class is very important. I think on the other piece of it and the biggest piece for me in terms of what we do at our institution is the holistic supports that we we provide. We provide academic advising for every student there are milestone advising that's done with them to make sure that they are following their you know the program pathway planner that we create and I'll talk more about that later but we but also making sure that they are successful in their courses catching them early rather than later while they're made struggle so those are some things that we definitely feel like are very important to have a successful dual credit program and we call it dual credit in Texas by the way. To a credit dual enrollment everyone has to be versed in the different lingo of different states. Olga and John is there anything you want to weigh in on around important components of high quality dual enrollment programs? I would add so the rigor but also kind of the the intentional course selection right connected to path with a strong could probably go into depth about like just ensuring that the courses actually will build towards a degree or credential and nowadays there's still a lot to talk about a value right so that there's the connection to to labor market and kind of the demands as well because for some of these students they may not they may want to go straight to work so you know giving them access to some of the post-secondary training through two. enrollment that could be you know allow students to go a longer away but then they've also been connected so they can come back and for those that do want to move on ensuring that the courses are transferable across segments so in California we have a you know the California community colleges which are our two-year colleges we have the California State University's which are broad access for your universities and we have the UC the University of California which are more selective and so courses need to transfer across all segments to really open doors for students and give them you know maximize their likelihood of you know progression and completion so I think those are other key factors. Yeah I would add nationally about 80 percent or like the vast majority of dual enrollment course sections occur at high schools and are being offered primarily by high school instructors you know under the supervision and with approval of the college and so the question of quality has been really important over the decades through which these programs have existed and there's this organization nasep the national alliance for concurrent enrollment partnerships that throughout over the years has maintained standards for quality for especially historically as focused on the sort of high school based sections and they're things that are it seem kind of obvious but are just important standards like we're going to have the same qualifications for the instructors that are teaching it as we would for our college faculty we're going to use the the same materials for the course there's sort of regular oversight and quality monitoring for those instructors and I think that you know it's it's really important to sort of lead with quality and what is sort of that college level expectation but then how are we going to expand the supports for students who are new college learners who are maybe sort of on the margins of is college for me I'm not sure but if they got into the right course that's taught really well that's challenging but they have the right supports to be successful it really can be this transformative moment of I can do college or I didn't know that you know history is something I could study in college like there's a history to everything or that I could do drones as a part of college it really can have this magical effect if it's done well and so I think like having that instructional quality with the supports is really a key element but we've studied you know effective practices at colleges with with stronger results for their dual enrollment programs and we see other things being done as well like Marissa mentioned the sort of holistic supports are advising you know the mindset that if we provide advising to our regular college students at key milestones along their trajectory why aren't we not doing that for our dual enrollment students as well so providing college advising to help students explore and plan their pathways aligning the dual enrollment courses to major specific transfer pathways or you know career technical degrees to show students how they could continue on at the college and progress towards a college degree and then a lot of work to to just not say we're going to keep it quality and then exclude students but we're going to keep it high quality and then work to include everybody who could benefit through outreach to our high school partners you know going and visiting with you know community groups to make sure folks know about these dual enrollment opportunities and you know making sure that they're prepared and the parents and the students know what it means to take a college course so I think it's sort of at the heart is about the instructional quality and supports but then there's a lot sort of surrounding it and we find that this work is very related to ongoing student success reforms at community colleges we've described this as guided pathways frameworks for reform in community colleges and we think there's great opportunity to take that framework and really sort of extended to how colleges are approaching their dual enrollment programs. That's really helpful to hear. Something I heard John you said is that dual enrollment has expanded rapidly but at times not evenly and some of these colleges or even in some of the states what are some of the common barriers that still limit access for low income or minoritized students and how are some states addressing them. So some of the biggest barriers that we found like looking at other research as well as just what's happening in the field is cost for students so if students and families have to pay for these courses you know anything that sort of beyond sort of some nominal minimal fee that is just a barrier to college access that sort of these programs are then serving a different purpose. So cost to students and families is a big one and that includes related costs like books, transportation, you know a lot of high school students get free lunch at during the school day but if they're coming to the college you know there can be other sort of costs and things with food but there's also sort of policy barriers. I think one that's there's been more change recently is around eligibility criteria many states and colleges have very rigid eligibility criteria based on standardized test scores like you have to sort of pass the placement test in order to be able to start taking dual enrollment courses and what we know in general from community college placement is that an over reliance on those high-stakes standardized tests is not a good way to sort of determine who is likely to succeed in college courses with the right supports and so we see colleges and states really shifting towards multiple or alternative measures like high school grades and even sort of broader measures of eligibility with it then the sort of requisite supports to help students be successful. I could add to that John you hit it right on the now when you said financial even though Texas still has an opportunity for students we don't have no cost to all students we have the fast program which is the financial aid for SWIFT transfer which is a part of the HB8 bill that came out for community college funding reform and and so what the problem we have is that we have to get the word out to those students with how the political climate is we can't identify certain subgroups it has to come out to all students so not all students even though some students may I say that okay I am I can qualify some of them don't feel comfortable and we can't have separate meetings because we have to be very careful on how we talk to student populations and so recruitment seems to be a problem with with us in terms of getting students they are aware making students aware of that the other pieces college readiness sometimes students may have some issues with the class and we're not providing the supports whether it's the college side or the high school side that supports they need to be successful in those classes and so that what ends up happening is if the student isn't successful that they then think the opposite of what it was intended which is that they are college ready and so sometimes it could be a turnoff so we're trying to be very intentional with our immersive advising to make sure that students are on track one make sure that we are there to provide the supports and if they're not ready right now does it mean that they're never ready and so those are some of the the the parts that we are very specifically looking at and making sure that we're taking care of with our low-income students through many of which are first time in college students or first-gen and or minoritized students but again I'm very cautious by saying minoritized because we really can't identify students in that capacity anymore because of DEI in Texas in April 17 moved us in that direction before federal policy changed. I can I can jump in to talk a little bit about how California has addressed some of the some of the barriers and so three of the main barriers that it has helped helped address relate to addressing the logistical the financial and kind of the paperwork and the barriers those pose through assembly bill 288 it helped address these issues this established the college and career access pathway programs and I'll talk a little bit more about these later but it addressed the logistical and financial barriers because it covers tuition and books for students who participate in dual enrollment through the C-CAP program it also allows high schools and colleges to offer dual enrollment courses in the high school campus in this during the school day and closed only to high school students so it eliminates some of the logistical barriers that may have prevented some low-income students because they didn't have the transportation or they can pay for the courses it also allows for students who needed to have an after-school job to participate in dual enrollment also those that may do sports or other extracurriculars so really expanded access in a variety of ways and so after AB 288 was implemented for a few years they realized that paperwork and application was a burden because they needed to submit this every time they took a course and so through the passage of assembly bill 30 it helped streamline the process by only requiring one concept form for for from principles and parents so that students could participate in C-CAP the entire duration in the program so it helped you know streamline and ease access in that way as well I've heard that two of in other states and colleges that just sort of easing the administrative burden of registering and getting approvals and sort of getting into the right courses really is an access strategy because you know once you bring in a different system you know the K-12 system in schools and you're talking about students who are not 18 and you need to bring in the parents it does sort of create a lot of extra paperwork and you know there's vendors out there that are offering services to streamline that. And I've seen a lot of colleges just build stuff internally with shared approvals and a lot more stuff going online than paper-based. And that has really helped to streamline the processes. Because the other barrier, it's not a policy barrier or something about funding. But it can just be the way that we think about these programs and the mindset about this is acceleration and not college access. And oftentimes, the lack of intentional practices, like the lack of outreach, the lack of communication, the lack of advising, the lack of supports, when it's more what folks might call like a program or privilege approach where students, if you're having issues, just seek out help. Or if you want to talk to an advisor, just come talk to an advisor. But we know that placing all that burden on students really limits who gets access to the supports that we know students need. That's a great point. I want to come back then Olga to give you an opportunity to talk about the College Inquiry Access Pathways partnerships for the listener. As Olga had said, these agreements are between community college districts and K through 12 school districts designed to expand access to dual enrollment for underrepresented students. They were authorized in 2015 and continued to drive dual enrollment innovations in California. I think what you said about paperwork is really interesting, because we don't often think about paperwork as a policy issue, but it's apparent that in California, it was enough of a barrier that there did need to be some state legislation that addressed that. So I'd love to hear Olga a little bit more about what policy decisions or investments have been most pivotal in driving the growth in dual enrollment in California. And then we'll talk a little bit more about Texas. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Yes, so I think over the last decade, we've really had this legislative legislature kind of together with state investments, with like philanthropy, kind of state initiatives that have really kind of come together to really spur the growth of dual enrollment. And so yes, AB 28, fully enacted and implemented across the state in 2016 really helped set the stage for this growth. And I'll kind of reiterate, so the goal with C-CAP partnerships were to establish an opportunity for K-12 districts to work with their partner college to offer dual enrollment taught on the high school campus exclusively to high school students. And students were exempted from having to pay the tuition and fees. And high school students were also provided the books necessary for those courses. And so it really also, the legislation also kind of included language that the focus for this program were students who had been underrepresented in higher education and those who may not already be on the college path. So there was an explicit intentional focus to really use this law to broaden access to dual enrollment, to populations who had traditionally been excluded as John Fink noted this kind of was seen as a program of privilege. And then programs like C-CAP really helped to try to address and tackle this issue. And so as I noted, after a few years, the need to address this paperwork burden also kind of led to another piece of legislation. The state has also invested over $700 million to expand dual enrollment through a variety of initiatives like C-CAP grants, middle and early college grants, and also through Golden State Pathways programs, which now also include goals as part of California's college and career pathways work. The goal is to get students to complete at least 12 college credits. And dual enrollment is one of the primary ways that they're encouraging districts to do that. And so in addition to this, the state has impacts. The state governor has established impacts with our UC, the UC system, the CSU and community college. And they all single out dual enrollment as a strategy and set a goal for getting students to complete at least 12 college credits before they graduate from high school. The career education master plan also identifies dual enrollment as an important strategy to help ensure that we have the workforce that California needs to continue to drive its economy. We're still very far away from reaching universal access and that reaching this 12 credit milestone, only about 3% of our high school graduates are actually completing 12 credits or more by the time they graduate from high school. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of momentum. C-CAP has been driving a lot of the growth. Currently, we see nearly four out of 10 students participating in dual enrollment are participating through C-CAP. And over time, we've seen an increasing share of participation occurred through C-CAP. And I think it's partly driven things through the structures that it's allowing districts and colleges to establish. - Well, good. I also understand the chancellor of the community college system has a goal for all ninth graders to take a dual enrollment class. What do you think of that proposal? - I think it's on the path to try to get universal access. I know there are, I'm aware of advocacy organizations, really, I think there was a legislative proposal that was made a two year bill that is aiming to give California students universal access to dual enrollment. I think there's a really solid understanding that the earlier you informed students about the opportunities to become college ready, career ready, the better. And so I think colleges are starting and they often start with, I believe maybe Marissa, John mentioned kind of the college and career, college knowledge, kind of the counseling courses that inform students about kind of the post-secondary opportunities, pathways, the college planning. So I think that's the sort of course that the earlier you get it, the better to kind of set you on the path to be ready to make that successful transition. And I, from what I know is that this is how a lot of that ninth grade access is occurring. It's through these college success courses. So if they are strong and are truly setting students on the path to create a plan to achieve a college degree or credential, I think they could be a really successful strategy. But I believe we're working on that and I believe our colleagues at Wheelhouse have been monitoring ninth grade participation and it's still in its early stages. - That's great. It's wonderful to hear a state pour so much money into dual enrollment. I know California is a huge state, but to really try to be intentional about investments and paying attention to both the college and career options for students. Marissa, could you tell us a little bit about what's been going on in Texas? I know there were significant changes made through housing and more recent legislation. Can you walk us through some of the most important policy shifts and most importantly, how they're enabling or incentivizing expanded dual credit access? - Yes, fast has definitely been a game changer for us. A student just tidbit, I don't think that I mentioned this, but any student that has identified through the state, TEA, Texas Education Agency as free or reduced lunch participant is allowed to take dual credit classes free of charge, no tuition, fees, books, anything. That's the reimbursement that we get at the community college from the state. So that's been something that's given us an opportunity to grow our student population in terms of our low SES students in the many ways that we have, right? The word of mouth, but also another one that recently changed was they changed the administrative code, the Texas administrative code in terms of the language. So any student who starts in ninth grade Olga as a dual credit student and or maybe 10th grade, 11th grade, whatever they onboard into dual credit and as considered non-degree seeking up to 15 semester credit hours. So 14 and below are non-degree seeking. They no longer have to have a placement exam, which means that they can go into any college level course without a prerequisite of a test of an exemption of anything. So essentially we are allowing students who are non-degree seeking until they hit their 15 hours because we have legislation in there that requires a student, once they hit 15 semester credit hours, they have to declare a major. So anybody under that, they have up to 14 hours of taking, they can essentially take a college level course without any kind of testing. And so that is something that we are navigating right now because the misalignment of funds and funding for our ISD partners and us, we are very concerned and we wanna make sure that our students are getting the resources they need. So they're successful in these courses that we don't know whether or not they qualify to take. And so we're being very intentional in working with our ISD partners to try to navigate this new change in the rules. But essentially we cannot stop a student. So that's been a game changer for us for sure, outside of the great opportunities that we have to the fast program. Does that mean that more low income students who might not always have had access to dual enrollment? I'm thinking about like how kids who are super smart take a class at the community college and like second level calculus, but we're talking about trying to expose students at an earlier level to college level coursework, but not necessarily because they've run out of all the opportunities at the high school. And so I'm curious how that change sounds like you have a little trepidation about the change, but it also seems to overcome some of the barrier that John had mentioned around placement exams serving as a firm barrier to keep out some of these students who may have in the past just been looked at as not qualified for dual enrollment. Right. I think for those students that are not good test takers, but are ready for college. This is a fantastic opportunity for them. We do have students that have taken the TSA and have not test they have not passed it, but they've taken some TSA non TSA liable courses like speech, creative arts, something like that already to get their feet wet in dual credit. These types of students are the ones that we want to put in these operat least college level courses because if they pass them with a C or better, they are considered C rolled and they can continue on taking college level courses. Otherwise before this change in our code, the students essentially could not take a college level English or college level map or history or government or psych until they pass the TSA. So if they're still within those 14 semester credit hours, they can take this course, pass it, and then they can continue on taking dual credit. I think that that's where it really is going to make a benefit for our students, but my only concern working on the transfer side of it is making sure that these students are really getting what they need in preparation for when they transfer to the four year institution. And so that's the other piece of it that we're trying to make sure that even it goes back to academic rigor, right quality. So I definitely want to make sure that we're doing right by the student for sure. Yeah, I would I would add just as somewhat of an outside observer here of Texas and other states that I think like for for so many years, there's there have been sort of these safeguards in place to make sure that students if they're going into a college math class or college English class. But they're like ready to be successful in that class and it oftentimes was a test, single high six standardized tests. And I think the sort of intention there was like we don't want students to fail in these courses and that's a really important point because if they if a high school student takes a college course and does not succeed, it's bad. Especially if that is counting for high school credit and then they get into issues with their high school graduation. So this is a major concern. And I think for years, the thought was like, well, let's like kind of keep those students out of these dual enrollment courses. And now the opportunity is well, how can we think bigger about dual enrollment as a college access strategy, including getting students into and through their college math and English courses while in high school. But how are we going to make sure that we do that well for students so that they are successful and what else do we need to do. It's essentially like what more costs or investment do we need to put in supports for those students. And I think what's really important for community college leaders here is just to be on the same page with the K 12 leadership around what is the goal and vision for these programs. And how are we going to keep students best interests as the North star because there are competing incentives and state funding formulas like the K 12 districts might be getting funding for how many students they can get to and through math or English. And the colleges are the ones trying to deal with all these students coming into those courses and how do you support them all. And I think there can be competing incentives and disincentives. And so what's what's very important is for college leadership and in school district leadership to be strongly aligned on the ultimate goal and vision and to be able to sort of stay true to that with students and the community interest as the North star. And I said, could you share a story or an example from a Texas college or region where dual enrollment has made a noticeable impact of for students, especially those from underserved communities. I'm thinking about how do we make real some of our conversation so far. I mean, I can talk from my own experience, right, like we are at 63% fast participation, which means that there's 63% of our students that are in the ISD that we serve that are free and reduced lunch, which is identified or equates to low SES. And so that's because that is the only measure and this is the only time we've been able to measure right because before we didn't have to exchange data and we didn't have to send anything to anything through the state to identify students who are low SES through the measure of, I'm sorry, I say, FRL free and reduced lunch. And we are now at a point where we're at the same percentage as the overall students that are on free, reduce low SES for the district. And so that's a big, a big deal for us because that means that it's working. And I think that the other pieces of it is we're still pushing hard on our program pathway planners, which essentially has aligned our guided pathways and transfer degree plans all the way from ninth grade through. And so those are the pieces of it that we're working through. And so that that in itself, and the fact that we have such a strong shared model with our partners and we have shared dual credit advisors in two of our school districts now, it was one at first. Now it's two of our school districts is a big deal because that means that they see the investment of dual credit not. Just as another high school course, but they actually see it and honor it as a college level course and that it's something that's definitely worth worth the value, right? And so those are those are some of the things that we feel the only concerns I have about it, though, is, you know, when they do transfer. Some of the problems that we're having are for our STEM majors interest for ability for our STEM majors. So those are the pieces of it that we're working through not just for our dual credit students, but also for our general population as well. And Marissa one thing that I found interesting about what's going on in Texas is also there is an incentive in the new state community college funding formula for colleges to get students to 15 credits of dual credit. And that's just incredibly novel. I don't know there's not another state in the country that's trying to incentivize to a credit in that same way when we think about performance based funding in the community college sector. And I'm wondering what kind of impact do you think I know it's too early to talk about actual impact, but if you had a crystal ball, what do you hope would come out of that? What I had initially hoped was that we not only got the funding for a student that reached 15 semester credit hours of dual credit before high school graduation. I was also hoping that we would get them we would get the transfer points because there was a concern at one point that it would be considered double dipping. But essentially what the resolve is is that any student that has 30 semester credit hour of dual credit. Once they transfer, we get the transfer points for them as long as it's as long as it's 30 semester 15 and 15, which for any general population student, it would be 15 so the combination of both makes sense. So I think I think that that probably helpful and we're looking at the state appropriations for that in reviewing whether or not we are getting that because we have students that also get associates degrees. And so they're state funding behind that as well. And so making sure that we are getting exactly what we're supposed to get because you have students that are considered a call a student and it will credit student and where's that line and making sure we get all the. The right funding is definitely something that I'm hoping that's happening. And Olga, could you highlight a Californian district college partnership that's doing innovative work and creating pathways for underserved populations going back to a point that was just made by John and Marissa about the importance of math and the role at place when we provide access to dual enrollment. We published a study earlier this year on how we call it making gains in gateway math through on math through dual enrollment because in California for those that might not be familiar back in 2019 California fully implemented legislation aimed to reform developmental education known as assembly bill 705, which really aimed to address equity with kind of with the barriers that were being posed by David in California. And what that did was it eliminated the use of tests for for accessing math and English and ESL. I think ESL still kind of still working on kind of their assessment process, but definitely for English and math high school records were the primary way that colleges determined who had access to to math and English. At the same time, California was working on how do we expand access to do equitable access to dual enrollment through AB 288. So with this study, we were trying to kind of assess what are the challenges and opportunities to kind of drying on these two major pieces of legislation, equitable, you know, assessment and placement and gateway math and English and equitable dual enrollment. And we first looked at math and we saw that there are a lot there's there's lots of great opportunities, especially now that we're thinking about how do we use what students are doing. achieved in high school to inform the placement process. And we find that actually there's a lot of room for growth. Like we did see a tremendous improvement and who enrollment in Gateway Math through dual enrollment, going from about 12,000 students in 2016-17 to roughly 20,000 students in the class of 2023. So it's still relatively small in scale for California standards, but it's probably larger than some whole states and given kind of how big we are. We also find an opportunity because about half of the students in high schools go through algebra two, which is kind of the prerequisite for accessing a lot of Gateway courses that are required for transfer degrees. And about a quarter of high schoolers in their senior year don't take any math at all in California high schools. So there's this opportunity to really give students access to the college level math course through dual enrollment their senior year at the latest, right? Some students might be even ready sooner. So stronger relationships between K-12 and community colleges to provide access to these K- Gateway courses as soon as possible really helps address some of the challenges with students may not take their college level math until a few years after they take in their high school ones. So I think that what all the program will highlight is the college bridge. So the Central Valley as a region in California is kind of the agricultural heart of California. It's one of our regions that there's a lot of room for growth in terms of college access and college completion. There are a lot of low income, farm market, immigrant community settle in the Central Valley and the Central Valley higher ed consortium has really focused on how do we improve access to higher education and they've made dual enrollment and transfer a priority of their work and with investments in K-16 collaborative. They've really kind of zeroed in on math and English as kind of the strategy for dual enrollment and they've used funding to upskill their high school teachers so that they have the minimum qualifications which are masters in English or math to offer the courses and through a partnership with college bridge they established the math bridge program which focuses on giving access to dual enrollment math to students who may not see themselves as good math students. So they're not the highest achievers or kind of in the middle, but if given access to kind of this higher level transfer level statistics or college algebra course they could be on the path. Closer to the path math is the biggest barrier for college completion. So it really kind of illustrates that when you know when this consortium kind of identifies David reform and you know, dual enrollment as an opportunity and they really kind of weave together multiple sources of funding they can expand access through key partnerships and in this case a real focus on boosting gateway math completion and so this program is in its infancy and we're hoping to monitor how that progresses but to the point about being intentional about course selection I think this is kind of a really great example. Yeah, I'd love that example because it also highlights it. California I feel like has been really innovative in terms of embedding dual enrollment or funding for dual enrollment in multiple funding streams. I mean, you mentioned the main ones in terms of golden state pathways and C-CAP but also the K through 16 partnerships as well as some of the other economic development initiatives in California include dual enrollment as a strategy and I just am really struck by how the state has woven that in in multiple places over the last several years. So before we close, I wanted to ask each of you what policies you feel like are still needed to ensure dual enrollment truly closes and not widens access gaps to college coursework. Credit transfer. I think that's the biggest piece right now. Students can take dual credit classes all day but if they're still having to go when they graduate from high school, a three, four years because of the sequencing of classes or whether or not the university chooses or not chooses to take those courses or how they choose to put those courses in their degree plan, then I think that for those that are low SES, it becomes moot for them to do it. It's almost like they get burnt out before they finish. They get to the university and still have to go four years but they just did four years of college when they're high school. And so that is, I think that is the biggest piece that I hope that someone will start addressing. I feel like, you know, Olga, you've mentioned transfer with dual credit. John, you've been talking about transfer and dual credit. So I feel like it's starting to become more and more of an important topic and I hope that in the work that we're doing that we can really change some minds of some policymakers and maybe they'll listen to practitioners like us. And I know the research that we're doing is all integrated so that we can show the importance of it but that is my biggest thing right now is transfer coursework. Yeah, my colleague at CCRC Arelly talks about the fact that you have all your community college dual enrollment students who then go to university after high school, they're sort of like by default transfers. She calls them stealth transfers. Yeah, it's gonna be a growing number of those as dual enrollment expands. I would say like state policy for dual enrollment in terms of like how do we sort of really harness the moment and make this a college access and expanding opportunity moment. It's really first and foremost about funding because for this for dual enrollment to work as a college access strategy, it has to be free for students and families like full stop. And somebody's got to pay for it. I think you can argue that it is sort of marginally cheaper to deliver when you sort of utilize the fact that you can offer it in partnership with a high school. But especially if you want to do the type of dual enrollment program we've been talking about where you're providing students with the right supports and a pathway and advising, that comes with cost too. And so we've been talking about Texas and California here, which are making substantial investments in dual enrollment and dual credit for this college access and sort of as an on ramp to college opportunity. There's many other states where colleges are not funded very well for dual enrollment, only getting a partial reimbursement or every once in a while, discretionary pot of money from the state or none of the above. And so if students are not going to pick up the tab, then school districts or colleges tend to sort of absorb this cost just as a part of the mission. And I think you can only sort of go so far with that. What we're working on now is studying how do you sort of become more efficient, optimize your finances, redistribute existing college staff and operations to sort of serve this high school dual enrollment population that is now like a third or more of enrollment, but the staffing doesn't reflect that. It might be just a couple of people sort of in a back office. And I think that those sort of questions and conversations are going to continue to be relevant for community colleges in Texas, California, and elsewhere to sort of change to reflect the sort of new reality that a huge part of who these colleges are serving are high school students. So I love it that Texas uses dual credit as kind of how what they call their program because in California we can't, because high school students don't automatically get high school credit for their dual enrollment courses. They get college credit because they enroll through the college, so it appears on their transcript. It is really on a district-by-district basis if they've established the agreement in this way that will allow K-12s to give students credit for that math course or that England for the history course. Often students have to take both a high school and the college course if you know to meet high school and graduation requirements and get those college credits. So I think making the changes to automate awarding both K-12 and college credit is necessary to improve the efficiency of the system, right? Like because at the moment then the state is spending twice to ensure that the student is taking the high school level course versus the high college level course or the same history course at both places. So and that's connected to the need and we're working on developing a state-wide longitudinal data system to really automate this process because it shouldn't rely on districts you know having those agreements or it shouldn't rely on students having to take their transcripts over to the other institution. So really this the need for this process to be seamless, I think the state-wide longitudinal data could help automate you know, applications, awarding credit, you know ensuring that they're getting transfer credit at across all segments because you know the state-wide longitudinal system is supposed to connect all public institutions. So I think really having the motivation to to ensure those data systems are working and talking to each other and ensuring that there are no incentives for institutions to want to continue offering or want to have to make a student take a course that technically they've already met through dual enrollment, I think is critical. Another really large opportunity for you know tapping into the high school population that is not otherwise going to college and this is the group that you want to focus on if we're going to try to grow prosperity and grow college enrollments it's really you know not it's really about students who are started on the margins and might not go to college and this is a large number of students in many communities it's like half of high school graduates are just not going anywhere and I think that you know take for example Texas which has had like a large dual credit program for many years and now like a fifth of high school students are taking some type of dual credit course the number who are taking a CTE or career technical course is like in the single digits so most of this is sort of gen ed transfer and if you look to see like who else is graduating from high school in Texas and across the country there are tons of students that are sort of entering and progressing in high school CTE programs and concentrating and they're not taking any dual credit courses like just nationally there's a whole third of high school graduates that have concentrated in the CTE program but have never taken a dual enrollment course and I think that there's such huge opportunity there for that group because if you look at these CTE programs that the students are working on in high school they sound a lot like our colleges programs and there is such potential we already have the dual enrollment infrastructure partnered with these high schools to think about how do we make that sort of a CTE aligned pathway into college and we also know that the post secondary level of training in those fields are really the sort of good career jobs that students need and so I think that you know policies or sort of college and thinking and partnerships that is really focused on that high school CTE population and how are we putting the college courses into those career tracks have have a lot of promise and there I should say too like there are exemplars that are doing this well you know we visited Lee College and and you're some of your ISD partners and that's where we saw it happening like you you were putting it with your ISD partners like you were just putting your related dual credit courses into those CTE programs of study and I think that that that feels like a model that could work in many other places. I'll jump in to say that that is one of the goals with the Golden State Pathways Programs in California is to their kind of college and career pathways programs focused on you know health you know STEM education and so the idea is to embed linked dual enrollment or other college level courses into K12 pathways reforms and so definitely kind of promise there and with a goal of getting their students to complete at least 12 college credit. Yeah I think that's a really important point and it does feel to me like there are some real openings for looking at career pathways at the college level and doing some of that crosswalk to help ensure that it's meeting you know that it is meeting the needs the complex needs that we're talking about in terms of providing access to high school students but also ensuring then that they have options should they want to go directly into the labor market and try to find a middle-skill job and then have that opportunity to continue on to more education and training later on should they wish but that dual enrollment can be an opportunity to ensure that students receive exposure to many different areas. To your point Amy I would just lift up an example of this that I saw a couple weeks ago at a conference from Austin Community College in Texas that had been like mapping out their dual credit courses and how it builds into high school CTE programs and here it was like advanced manufacturing and semiconductor and sort of was showing students the pathway to that sort of first level short certificate the associates of applied science but then also their applied bachelor's degrees that you know the college is offering and then a local master's degree in in semiconductor training so I think it doesn't it doesn't have to mean even sub baccalaureate credentials it can mean a whole range of like the bachelor's degrees that our colleges are offering in applied fields more and more as well as transfer partnerships and graduate degrees in further training but it's fundamentally about sort of connecting to what our students interested in what's the local economy where's the growth area and showing students like how this can build over time and that's also connected to policy in Texas because we do get funding for credentials of value and high demand fields and so a part of that too outside of dual credit once they finish and they come to us right as they're finishing in those in those certificates and or degree plans we do get that funding for it so that's another added piece of it but we did build out to John's point we did build out our process technology instrumentation welding degree plans so that while they're taking the classes like welding classes instead of taking that high school credit do the dual credit right and then you can get both of them so our program pathway planers we do have CTE ones that are built out for that reason. That's wonderful I've really enjoyed our conversation today and I'm grateful to all of you for taking time to talk to me and our audience of community college trustees, presidents and other interested parties. I think that dual enrollment is a incredibly promising strategy and as you all have noted it's already happening at a high level across the country so I think a few things that that are trustees who are interested in influencing policy can obviously think about from the lessons of California and Texas are to address cost as fast the program in Texas provides low-income students with free dual credit as well as setting a ceiling on how much community colleges can charge for everyone for dual credit and then as Olga pointed out it is freeing California as well and there has been all this additional investment to ensure that institutions and school districts can build high-quality pathways in the college and career.