Student Success Podcast: For Higher Ed Professionals
Learn practical and actionable strategies to support college student success. Access show notes, resources, and transcripts at the podcast section of the Continuous Learning Institute, a free higher ed resource hub: https://www.continuous-learning-institute.com/
Student Success Podcast: For Higher Ed Professionals
Successful Dual Enrollment with John Fink
Learn about successful dual enrollment implementation.
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Welcome to the Student Success Podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm Al Solano, founder of the Continuous Learning Institute, or CLI, a higher education online resource focused on providing community college and open access university educators with practical information on how to get results at their campus. As a resource within CLI, the Student Success Podcast is focused on just that the challenges, opportunities, failures and successes of practices intended to improve student success and equity. The goal is to leave you with thought-provoking ideas, nuts and bolts, information and or lessons learned from the field so you can consider how you might apply them to your institutional context. Them to your institutional context. For today's podcast, it's a pleasure to have John Fink. John is Senior Research Associate and Program Lead at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College. His research uncovers structural barriers that result in inequitable access to educational and economic opportunity for racially minoritized, low-income and first-generation students. He focuses on how educational institutions can change to produce more equitable outcomes and he prioritizes applying findings to inform efforts to improve community college effectiveness. He was the lead author on a national study of community college dual enrollment students, which tracked former dual enrollment students into post-secondary education and provided national and state-by-state outcomes. His work was recognized by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students with the Transfer Champion Catalyst Award in 2019. Catalyst Award in 2019. John's research has been published in the Journal of Higher Education Community College Review, journal of American College Health, journal of Student Affairs, research and Practice, new Directions for Student Services and the NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Student Success Podcast, john. Thank you Good to be here. Student Success Podcast, john. Thank you Good to be here. So, john, I start all podcasts asking guests if they wouldn't mind sharing something about themselves besides work, a hobby or a story or whatever. Would you share something please?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So I guess I'd share. You know, this fall is I'm hitting my 10 year workiversary at CCRC, but so it feels like, wow, just a decade's gone by. But I grew up in Wisconsin and moved out to the East Coast about 15 years ago and we lived in New York for a while.
Speaker 2:But about six or seven years ago we moved down to Philadelphia and now we live in South Philadelphia, like really close to the Phillies and the Eagles stadiums and the Flyers and the 76ers, and so like I think for a while like I'd tried to maintain my allegiance to the Packers and like Wisconsin sports, but it's just been like impossible to shake the Philly sports thing down here in South Philly where you can like walk to the stadiums. And now I got two young boys and we just like we actually can like walk to the Phillies games and we just like fully drank the Kool-Aid on that and I'm really excited for the postseason. It was like a really close game last night against the Mets, so you can like hear the stadium and then hear all the neighbors cheering at the same time. So it's been a really cool way to connect with the city here. That's sort of on the mind today, after a big weekend.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice Thanks for sharing that. I grew up in New York City and New York City fans can be rough, but I don't think anybody beats Philly fans. I mean they could be really rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know the, I think it's, it's it feels like a cool way to connect with the neighbors, Um, so it's like you gotta stay up on it if you want to kind of build those connections and it's, it's fun, you know, it's fun when everybody's cheering for the same team.
Speaker 1:John, actually we met a few years ago. I was brought in to help with a project at CCRC we're doing guided pathways for rural colleges and I'll put that a little bit. So we interacted a bit. So it was great to work with you and I've been keeping up on all of your dual enrollment work and finally, I have you on the podcast. So thank you so much for being here. So the focus of today is dual enrollment, and let's start with the very basics, John, just so that everybody has clarity what is dual enrollment exactly, especially given that there are different ways of going about it? So can you give us that foundational definition of dual enrollment?
Speaker 2:Sure. So dual enrollment is really a lot of different things across the country and so very broadly defined it's when a student is taking a college course for college credit before they complete high school. And I say I say a student before they complete high school, and I say a student before they complete high school. You might want to say a high school student, but even in some cases there might be an eighth grader taking such a course. So it's really anytime before students complete high school that they're taking a course for college credit, and that can be a lot of different things. It can be just a one or two, you know one off course or one or two courses. That's happening at the college. It might be taught at the high school, might be taught by a college professor, might be taught by a high school instructor. It could be an early college high school model that is much more kind of intensive in its design. So it's a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:It's called a lot of different things dual credit, concurrent enrollment, dual enrollment and many other terms but what it's not is it excludes advanced placement or international baccalaureate programs. So when we use the term dual enrollment as a broad umbrella, it covers a lot of ground. But it is sort of separate and distinct from other programs like AP, which is quite large nationally, and IB, where oftentimes the credit that students get in college has to come through performance on a single high-stakes standardized test. So dual enrollment is a lot of different things. It's a quite big bucket of practice happening out in the country with millions of students participating every year. Practice happening out in the country with millions of students participating every year and I think, yeah, the joke going around people like you know there was one list of 34 different names for dual enrollment across the country or like every time I think someone says that I bet like the number keeps on going up and up. But it's generally just college course taking in high school for the most part.
Speaker 1:Let's unpack a little bit the college instructors teaching at the high school versus having the high school teachers teach to do enrollment. The reason I want to unpack this a little bit is because about oh my gosh, it's been now what? Five, six years ago I was contacted by Cal State LA's College of Education because a lot of the K-12 districts were telling the College of Education the dean at the time hey, we got this dual enrollment, it's great, but we have a challenge. The faculty that come to our campuses they know their content but they're not all pedagogically equipped to teach adolescents. A non-credit course a certificate, mini certificate if you will that was then. The cost was significantly reduced because the dean was really cool. She put it in their, basically in their continuing ed. We created the course and then it helped faculty be better prepared to teach at a high school. Has that been something you've been hearing about too?
Speaker 2:Has that been something you've been hearing about too? Do you have any thoughts on that of just design, let alone sort of the quality of implementation? And so you know there's organizations like NASEP, the National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, that have standards for accreditation around quality and that speak to things like. You have to have these things in place to have a quality program including shared professional development and sort of work on both the content of the course and as well as the pedagogy. And so our research at CCRC, you know we've done work to look at the effects, like you know, does it work? But you know, our research now and into the future is just much more focused on, like how can we make these programs work even better for more students? And this issue of quality. And you know, thinking about, like, the pedagogy, how to keep the college standards of a college course but teach it in a high school setting to a class of high school students.
Speaker 2:I think that's that's a real sort of rich discussion that's happening in the field and, you know, ideally I think it happens in those partnerships between colleges and their K-12, in the disciplines and places we visited that have really strong outcomes that are, that are, you know, you know delivering these courses to a broad range of students that are representative of their school districts but also have really strong outcomes for those students in dual enrollment even after high school, strong outcomes for those students in dual enrollment even after high school. They're really attuned to this and you know the deans overseeing these courses they're looking for instructors with prior high school teaching experience, just like knowing the sort of classroom management and what's needed to. You know, be in a high school and have that presence but also is a college faculty member and can bring in that college level curriculum, and I think that that's sort of like maybe that's the low hanging fruit. Look with folks with that K-12 in the background. But, as you sort of brought up, you know what you shared trying to create some training around that.
Speaker 2:You know now, high school students are one in five community college students across the country. What does it mean to be teaching classes with high school students in the seats, oftentimes completely filled with high school students? You know, I think some folks think we shouldn't do anything differently. This is a college course. A college course should be a college course, but any good instructor, I think, knows that you always have to meet the students where they're at, and I think how you do that and what it looks like very much needs to be an ongoing and really local conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had some discussions with some faculty who like a college course is a college course.
Speaker 2:But you know I work with many faculty to improve their practices at the college level at their institutions to improve their practices at the college level at their institutions and you don't want to bring those antiquated practices to pedagogy. And you know the requirements in place to teach a college course is about content, knowledge, subject matter, expertise. You know you got to have that graduate degree in a particular subject, which is, of course, incredibly important about having a college course, and you know there's a lot to be learned about how to teach it as well. That we can, that in higher ed we can really take from our K-12 colleagues as well that we can, that in higher ed we can really take from our K-12 colleagues.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's so much to learn from our K-12 colleagues. It's incredible. Do you have a sense, john, nationally maybe you have the data or maybe just kind of a sense, kind of your gut feeling here a little bit about what percentage nationally is dual enrollment, high school teachers teaching dual enrollment versus the college instructors at the high schools. Do you have a sense of that by any chance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the vast majority is taught at the high school by high school instructors. So one like a relatively recent national survey so just to give a little bit of a snapshot, put that at 80% of dual enrollment, 80% taught in the high school by high school teachers who are qualified to teach. So that's definitely the majority. That's not the case everywhere. In some states, in some cities you go and it's totally flipped the other way, where most dual enrollment's happening even outside the school day, like in the afternoons at the college.
Speaker 2:And I think as a researcher, one of the most frequent questions that I've gotten, that we've gotten as researchers, is like what's better? You know, kind of like what works better at the high school, at the college, by a high school instructor? Are there differences if it's a college instructor? And those are great questions. We've done some work on that in Texas, where you know we could kind of get in that if you're curious, but where you see like findings in the aggregate, like on a state level. But what we've also seen is like it can be done really well in any of those settings that can also not be done well in any of those settings.
Speaker 2:So it's, and oftentimes that sort of arrangement isn't that flexible. They're sort of like constrained in some way. You know, like the only way we can offer this is if it's done at the high school. That's like we're at a large scale. So how do we do that really well? And that's the second question that I think is really important and we focus. We visited places with really strong outcomes that are broadening access for students of color and low-income students and doing well and serving those students, and we see that those programs are taught at the high school. They're taught at the college. There's a little bit of online in there, so there's like ways to kind of try to do online well for students. But basically it can be done. It's sort of like how do you play to the strengths of each of those setups is generally what we find.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That's very interesting, that 80% figure. So high schools have existing curriculum right and they have faculty that teach certain requirements to graduate from high school. Is there sometimes a little bit of conflict and how's that resolved when, let's say, there's already the whole English four-year English sequence for high school and then here comes the college and they want to do something to have them take, for example, English composition, the first course they would take in college, the first course they would take in college? How do you find they normally kind of tease that out so that it doesn't conflict with the high school curriculum? Do you have a sense of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard of that. I think what I hear more frequently is that the crisis in many high schools is that the senior year feels like a throwaway for students. There's so much effort to get students past those key high school graduation requirements. Most students are pretty much done with everything by the end of 11th grade and so senior year, that 12th grade, it already was sort of like the senioritis, like kind of like the last year or whatever. And that's especially the case for students who have already kind of done most of their kind of core requirements. And so this is oftentimes why dual enrollment it's especially the case for students who have already kind of done most of their kind of core requirements.
Speaker 2:And so this is oftentimes why dual enrollment is really positioned as an important sort of bridge into post-secondary is because you know, we can start offering not just the sort of core English and math sort of courses but other courses that aren't even available at the high school, that the college offers, that are really interesting, that aren't even available at the high school, that the college offerss are constrained to content standards, oftentimes for English and math, and so they have to hit check all these boxes.
Speaker 2:And you know, sometimes I think, especially when partnerships are trying to do more innovative teaching and learning sort of curriculum design, trying to think outside those like the box of the sort of common core standards, that can that can be an issue. But I think I hear we I hear much more about, just like you know, getting those that sort of transfer level or college level English and math course taken care of in high school. So students are starting post-secondary kind of without that gatekeeper in the way but then also bringing in some courses of interest to help students explore fields that they might be interested in. You know, in post-secondary, help them think about those bachelor's degree transfer pathways or those associate degree pathways in fields of interest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. A few years ago well, many years ago I had all my three kids go through community college, but when they were in high school, the summer between ninth and 10th grade, I had them start taking community college courses. We didn't have a formal dual enrollment program here, so I always made sure that they took, for example, sociology, because it's not offered in high school. It wouldn't conflict, right. Art, history, psychology, kind of the social sciences and humanities. That wouldn't conflict. I found that the math and the science was not a good idea at the time, right? I don't know if things are changing, and I would imagine you have to have really good coordination between the K-12 and the colleges when you want to start this as early as eighth grade. You know so much about dual enrollment and its benefits, john, so how can colleges broaden the benefits of dual enrollment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a question that we focus a lot of our research on, focus a lot of our research on, like, how can we fully realize the potential of offering college courses to students in high school as not just a lever for an acceleration into and through college, but really as a college access and equity lever as well to address challenges that we're seeing around declining college enrollment rates, generally increasing questioning of the value of higher education and concerns about affordability. So, by you know what we see and we see when this is done well, is that implementing dual enrollment as a college access strategy to really any high school students and all high school students, especially those who are on the margins of college, maybe questioning is it worth it, is it? For me, providing some college course experience in high school can be extremely beneficial and the sort of research, the real sort of evidence base, really bears this out as well. Really, any type of course can be beneficial, but especially well-taught, field-aligned courses that are both sort of I'm getting exposure to a college-level course and having that general college knowledge building effect, but also have that connection to purpose and interest for the students. Wow, I didn't know that I could study drones in college. I thought college was X, but here I'm seeing college can be Y, z and ABC as well. It's like all these different things.
Speaker 2:So it really is an opportunity for community colleges especially to showcase their programs, all of their programs, including their applied bachelor's degrees, including their transfer pathways to local universities, and to use that to not just push students into college but to pull them in because they are connected and interested and engaged and it taps into their motivation and taps into their talents.
Speaker 2:That is essentially connecting guided pathways, reforms to high school dual enrollment programs with a focus on college access and equity, which we call dual enrollment equity pathways or DEEP.
Speaker 2:So we've studied this DEEP framework and described these different practices in that DEEP framework, as well as how colleges and their K-12 partners are connecting on a shared vision and purpose around dual enrollment as an access and equity lever and then making the investments to not just do the status quo dual enrollment practices, which has sort of resulted in more of an acceleration dual enrollment for students who are already university-bound mindset and approach that hasn't invested much in dual enrollment, hasn't invested much in outreach or advising and supports and has really created what we see now, which is persistent gaps in access for Black and Latino students, for low-income students, for first-generation and many other groups that are not well-served in this transition students with disabilities, english learners. But I think what's encouraging is that we visited places with better outcomes that are extending their Guided Pathways reforms into their high schools and they're having a lot of success, not just growing the number of students going to college generally, but also increasing the number of students who are coming back to their college after high school.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, john, you know I want to go a little bit into the Guided Pathways. As you know, I've done a ton of work in this area and there are some states like Washington and California especially California that gave the colleges a significant amount of funding to do Guided Pathways five years and then they extended it a little bit and it has its pros and cons, right. The cons, unfortunately and this is so much about leadership is that they never really got it. They saw this as a five-year grant program, right. And now that the money is dwindling, well, guided Pathways is going away and now we're doing.
Speaker 1:Our next flavor of the month, if you will, is dual enrollment. Good leadership, exceptional leadership, recognizes Guided Pathways is not a program, is not a grant. It takes a student journey framework and it's about continually improving our practices along that student journey. It's about continually improving our practices along that student journey. So for colleges, that still, because it's been the language, right, john, everybody kind of understands the pillars. It's what's been used forever, right? Dual enrollment nicely aligns and is part of guided pathways. Right. Through dual enrollment, you're helping clarify the path for students, you're helping them enter a path, stay on the path, right is when they're at the college, but the ensure learning that fourth pillar is also happening through dual enrollment. So the leadership and when I say leadership it's not just the college president or the VPs I'm talking about, for example, the faculty senate president, right, faculty are leaders in this as well.
Speaker 1:I think those that understand that it's a continuous improvement framework know that I can use that framework, I can use that language, to ensure that dual enrollment is part of this framework. Right, what are you finding? Are you finding that good leadership does make that intentional effort to say this is a cornerstone of guided pathways, as was developmental ed reform, or are you finding that a lot of places they just don't even remember what that was. And now it's the new flavor of the month, as some people call it. I don't want to diminish dual enrollment and call it flavor of the month. I say that as in. You know how it is in education. We always got like a new initiative, right, or some of them seeing this, as now this is the hot thing and they forgot all about the other student journey pillars. Right, what are you seeing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. You know, dual enrollment is an incredibly important on-ramp into the college and there's other on-ramps too. I think we've got to think about the adult incumbent workers out there, folks in basic education. So there's a non-credit program. So these different like sort of inflows or on-ramps into college and dual enrollment I think is sort of coming up so much in discussions because, first off, it's just large and growing. Second, it's growing in significance because otherwise enrollments are down. So if you got more high school students and fewer non-high school students, it's just a larger share of headcount at a lot of colleges. What I'm seeing from leaders that seem to be dealing well and having a strong vision around dual enrollment connected to their guided pathways or otherwise their student success reforms at their college, whatever they're calling it um is a real like enlightened self-interest and it's it's enlightened because it's seeing like a bigger picture, kind of like a more strategic, like five or 10 year out view um, that that benefits the college, it benefits the bottom line of the college but also works towards the college's mission and it's like the right thing to do for their community. But it is requiring investments. It's requiring some outlay of resources and investments in the short term to realize that like longer term goal and we've studied this in a few states Ohio, florida and Texas where it's a couple important to mention a couple of things for context.
Speaker 2:First, there hasn't been any additional funding for dual enrollment students for colleges and in fact, most colleges are losing money on offering these dual enrollment courses. We did an economic analysis of this like a year ago. Dual enrollment courses we did an economic analysis of this a year ago. We found on average, colleges are not recouping the total cost to offer these courses. The courses can be much cheaper to offer, especially if they're taught at the high school by a high school instructor. There's just not as many costs per credit. But they're generally discounting tuition and fees like steeply discounting, oftentimes offering it for free or getting very little reimbursement from the K-12 or from the state for those courses.
Speaker 2:So but the leadership are really seeing this as a lost leader. It's really a way to grow the supply of future college-going students who are already successful in their courses from high school, their college courses, and they're on a pathway to success and completion and transfer at their college. And so I think that that's what we're hearing, even in context where there is an additional funding where the performance funding is tuition, you know, because you want to grow the supply of students coming to your college and so from that perspective it really is worth making investments in expanding access. So casting a wider net in high school to students who maybe in the previous conventional approaches that have been described programs of privilege, dual enrollment you're reaching other students. You know the sort of students who are maybe not on the AP or honors track in high school. You're really trying to cast a wide net to any and all high school students, because that's where you're going to get the return in terms of if you can provide a high quality college course that lights the fire for learning and connects to students' interests and purpose and passion and gives students a broader view of what college is and can be, they're going to be much more likely to come back to the community college after high school instead of not going to any college.
Speaker 2:So this isn't about trying to detract the university-bound students to the community college after high school.
Speaker 2:This is about taking the students by which there's probably in many communities like half of high school graduates are just not going to college.
Speaker 2:So taking that huge pool of students and trying to get those students connected to a pathway while they're still in high school so that they come back to college. And when we've talked to college leaders and business officers in Texas, ohio, in Florida, they have the financials They'll show you like they're looking at their re-enrollment or yield rates. They're seeing okay, we got to hire, we're hiring five or six more advisors, outreach specialists, you know, for dual enrollment, but we're seeing this growing trend of students coming to us after high school. So I think that it's I call it enlightened self-interest, because it does. You do have to sort of see that longer term strategy and make some upfront investments, but this is what we're trying to outline in this deep approach to dual enrollment, one that is focused on the bottom line for colleges, financially, but also on the return to mission, like what are they trying to do for their communities? How are they growing, you know, and realizing their, their longstanding mission of providing accessible and affordable higher education?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, it goes back to leadership. I seen too often there are some colleges, for example, that they're in these crazy perpetual structural deficits and part of what they do is they look at a particular program and they go well, this cost us 300K, we got to cut it, and then this one cost us you know, I don't know 500K. We got to cut it, and then this one cost us 100K, we got to cut it, and then this one costs us 100K, we got to cut it. And they never do an analysis of whether that program is actually bringing in money. So if you have a program that costs 300K, you're losing initially, but over time let's say, in retention, that brings in a million dollars right, it's a $700,000 gain, right. And it's rare for leadership to do this kind of analysis, but the kind of leadership that doesn't do it but gets it that this is a strategy, even though it might be costing us some money. It's a long-term strategy to help students find a path and come to our college, because we gave them kind of a taste test right, which, by the way, means that we got to implement this really well, because if the taste test ain't good, students are not going to be coming back to your college I have a question about.
Speaker 1:So back to my experience, right so I was a first-generation college student and, having gone through college and then I worked with colleges, I was better prepared to help my kids, right? So they had the advantage of not being first-generation and there wasn't an official dual enrollment program at the time. So I kind of created one because I knew that the colleges offered college courses for high schoolers. By the way, John, the process by which to take these courses was before the pandemic was so cumbersome Talk about barriers. Oh my gosh, we had to have wet signatures from the principal and the counselor and if there was a smudge I kid you not, if there was a smudge on the course that you wanted to take, then they wouldn't accept the form. It took a frigging pandemic to get rid of that stupid wet signature form and finally they they they're using digital right.
Speaker 1:So my question is you have those families that are not first generation that know, like I'm going to have my kid take AP by the way, I hate AP, I hate the college board. I can do a whole podcast on that. The bullshit that they make these kids go through is just. It's just I don't want to start throwing F-bombs Anyway. So but dual enrollment is cool because it's not based on.
Speaker 1:It's going to end with this super high, standardized test that, by the way, you can take an AP course and it still wouldn't have the same content at a regular college it wouldn't even be the same often and then you can get a two or three and some colleges won't accept it because they want at least a four. It's just a terrible system. It just it makes the inequities even worse. But are you finding that you have families like me that are in our first generation, generation, that a lot of the kids that take this, a lot of the students, I should say, that take this, are those from the ones that typically do take the AP, the ones that do have funding to do stuff over the summer and academic preparation over the summer, and then, on top of that, they're doing dual enrollment and not enough of our disproportionately impacted minoritized students are taking it? Are you seeing some kind of trend?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, I think, like right now, if you look like a national sort of survey, sample survey of the 2019 high school graduates, about a third of graduates had taken a dual enrollment course in high school and in our research we visited places where their participation rates were much higher than a third. So they're getting like a half half of their high school graduates to take a dual enrollment course. So what are they doing to get that majority of high school students to take a college course, not just the ones who are kind of in the AP honors university track, sort of like the way you know, I mean, and what we've seen? So in our research we've described this deep framework. There's four different practice areas around what we saw at community colleges that were further ahead in their guided pathways implementation. We visited in Texas and Florida that also had a ton of dual enrollment students Texas and Florida that also had a ton of dual enrollment students and they had closed the gaps in access for Black and Latino and low-income students and had really strong dual enrollment outcomes. So we went to six of those sites and we described this deep set of practices and they had really broadened access, broadened the benefits of dual enrollments and what we saw is the four areas outreach, alignment, advising and support the outreach the first area. I mean there were just so many different tactics and things that these partnerships were doing to not, you know, just get the folks who are going to seek this out.
Speaker 2:You know, the high schoolers with parents, with the college education that knew to be asking about AP, knew to be asking about dual enrollment. Education that knew to be asking about AP knew to be asking about dual enrollment and instead what they're doing is they were building in dual enrollment into the default sequence, the default ninth to 12th grade pathway that really would be put on any student's plan when they came into high school. They were increasing knowledge and awareness about dual enrollment, starting in elementary and middle school, oftentimes in partnerships with college going sort of college knowledge programs like AVID and other programs that you know have projects throughout the year for like fifth, sixth and seventh graders to learn and research colleges. They were saying did you know you could take these free dual enrollment courses? They were, you know, doing a lot with the parent and family engagement. So you know, at the schools, in all the languages, for the parents out, at civic organizations, community organization, boys and Girls Club, churches, other sort of civic groups, local NAACP chapters.
Speaker 2:Like really getting the word out about these opportunities, because that's what you hear. A lot is like, well, I just didn't know, or I wish I would have known sooner, that I could have taken these free college courses in high school and then not just getting the word out. But you know, as students are coming into the programs you know holding like a parent university or a dual enrollment student parent info night, to say, ok, you're going to start in dual enrollment courses this semester. Here's what it means. Like this is a college course, this is not a high school course. Let's say like level set on the college expectations and parents are going to need support. Please, like reach out if you're struggling. The worst thing you can do is not reach out for help. So kind of norming on all of this, help seeking behavior, telling parents what it's going to be like.
Speaker 2:So all of this is a part of the outreach strategy, focusing not just on the wealthy and the wider high schools in the service area, but going to the Title I schools, the schools with large shares of minority families and students, and saying, well, why don't we have a robust dual enrollment offering at this high school and then going to the students who are gaining momentum in their CTE programs. In high school they're taking three or four CTE courses in a high school CTE program. They clearly have talents, interests, they have a career in mind and thinking how are we going to bring in post-secondary into that CTE program? Because we know that you're going to need a certificate or applied associate or applied baccalaureate or even a bachelor's degree if you want to have a good career in this field. So in this way I mean these partnerships were really inspiring because they were breaking down the legacy of race and class-based tracking that still exists in our education system tracking into the university track or the vocational track, the CTE, versus academic tracking, between just residential segregation of schools by going to the Title I schools and you know we did this research in Texas and Florida. You know, and people were, you know they weren't talking about equity per se, but they were talking about fairness and like what's right about fairness and like what's right and also you know that's where they're coming from and they're also you know the leaders were also saying like this is a way to grow the supply of students in our communities who are just going to go to college. So I think there's a lot of reasons to invest in this sort of approach, but I should.
Speaker 2:The last point I'll say is that you know this that is not the status quo of these dual enrollment programs. The status quo is a lack of outreach. Just come and ask if you're interested and if you can make it through the 50 hoops of the application process, including all the wet signatures or the send a form home to get your parents to approve the mature content of this college course, or you know, that's another example you know then we'll enroll you and you know we don't won't provide any advising. You know, seek out advising if you need it and we don't need to invest much in the supports in the classroom because you should be an accelerated student. You should have this all figured out. That's the status quo.
Speaker 2:It's very different than the deep approach where there's a lot of investment in the outreach to get the word out and the supports to get students in the advising, to help students, you know, explore the courses and post-secondary degree programs and transfer pathways and how the courses align, and to keep the rigor and the content standards high of those college courses, but to open up the door wider to those courses by increasing the supports in those courses so that students are successful. I think a lot of times the reason folks want to limit access to dual enrollment programs is because they don't want students to fail, and rightfully so. Students should not be failing on their dual enrollment courses. They generally don't. These courses have like 90, 95% course pass rates very high course pass rates but oftentimes that's used as a way to limit access and I think we need to change the mindset there that we don't limit access because we don't want students to fail. We increase supports because we don't want students to fail.
Speaker 1:John, what does DEEP stand for again Dual Enrollment, equity Pathways and what are the components to that again?
Speaker 2:So there's four practice areas outreach to underserved students in schools. Alignment of dual enrollment to college degrees and careers. Advising to help students explore their interests and develop post-secondary plans. And supporting students and delivering high quality instruction.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. So you said something that started to make me laugh a little bit, because you said that places like Texas and Florida they're doing a pretty good job with the minoritized students and you actually seen Well, some places where we just went to six sites, so you know, but it was.
Speaker 2:it was interesting to hear like just folks on the front lines really operating from a sense of fairness and justice for their community, despite the sort of political taboos and people feeling very restricted and worried about their political contexts.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's why I smiled a little bit because even if it's six colleges right, you're talking about institutions that are effectively an anti-DEI state politically. And in my own work I've done some national work I find very fascinating when I dig into some other program data and what I tell and I love California, I do a lot of my work here is that I'm finding I have found it's not all colleges, but I find this kind of theme. I like to see more research on this. I find this kind of theme. I like to see more research on this. I'm hypothesizing here, based on my experience and then even on the six that you went to, that some of these anti-DEI states especially the way people are feeling and they're like walking on eggshells their outcomes for students of color tend to be better than many of the places that reach out to me and ask me to help them out in California, and it shocks them to know that they have better outcomes for students of color because this is a very strong DEIA state, Right, and I tell them, I say you know what it is, they just do the work. They just do the work. It's not performative, it's not tweeting out stuff, it's not social media this and correcting people's language and thinking that's equity work, and they actually do the work.
Speaker 1:Had paid a ton of money to do guided pathways. They did it because it's the right thing to do and they're continuing to do guided pathways and folding in the dual enrollment and then, within that framework, you have what you called deep right, the outreach, alignment, advising and support. They actually do the work. When you do the work and you're intentional about these students who are disproportionately impacted, you tend to see results. Right Now, I don't want to make a blackened statement about California, because I work with many of the colleges that do do the work, but so many don't, so it just kind of made me go again. Oh my gosh. I wish there was a research study on this, on states that are anti-DEI versus that are very pro, and why some of the states have better outcomes for students of color. Right as we wind down here, I have a question. You can respond to what I just said if you'd like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I guess I would say I haven't done fieldwork or visited sites in California. I think, though, just a general observation, from looking at like national, like college level data, is there just so much variation like even within, especially within states. You know, we do these rankings where we say like how's, how's Texas and Florida doing on their transfer outcomes compared to other states or whatever, but there's so much like variation among colleges within states or whatever, but there's so much like variation among colleges within states. And then, when we look at this at a partnership level so we've done like the looking at the community college, university as a pair, how they're performing compared to other partnerships, or the community college and the high school as a pair compared to others there's just so much variation. You know even more at that pair level and I think it's you know to try to like, attribute them like what. Yes, and you know, really, in all of these scenarios there's room for further sort of like improvement and growth in most places. I do think you know we visited, we looked at all these payers in Texas and Florida that had the strongest results and that had the largest numbers of students and had broad access and closed gaps in access for Black and Latino low-income students, etc. Black and Latino low-income students, et cetera, and they were doing well. You know they had strong outcomes. But in many places, like, there was still a lot of room for improvement. You know it's like, well, you know your, your college going rate is is 75%. That's higher than the sort of general average of 65, but you know, 75% of dual enrollment students went to college, 25% didn't. So like, what's going on with those students? And so it's like kind of like nobody's perfect. There's always room for improvement. There's always room.
Speaker 2:And absolutely just as a personal reflection from the during the very politically charged times which is still the case around anti-DEI and anti-equity efforts in politically conservative states and anti-equity efforts in politically conservative states, it really makes me wonder, kind of like, what is lost from that taboo from the work. You know, kind of the color evasiveness that folks focus on low income students, which obviously is important and needed, but it does. It does feel like, you know, something's lost for sure because of that, because they're really not able to have the real conversations or be a part of their official acts and do the work, like you said, and I think that that is what was really inspiring from all of this research is just the commitment. And as much as we talk about like best practices right, you know, like what are these practice areas? It's the people man, like it's.
Speaker 2:You know we distill them down to practices and strategies, but it's just because the counselor, the advisor, like saw something that didn't look right and figured out a way to fix it, and then that becomes like the practice or the strategy. So it really comes down to people. It really comes down to like a sense of fairness that I've seen and a dissonance there, like this doesn't seem right, it doesn't, shouldn't have to be this way. It shouldn't have to be that if you want to take a dual enrollment course, you've got to pass this Accuplacer test. You know it shouldn't, it shouldn't that you just have to. It was like came down to how you know how was your morning that morning, you know how was your trip into school, and then that sort of determines whether or not you can, you know, take your college coursework in high school. So like folks are seeing that they're like that doesn't seem right. We should maybe look to multiple or alternate measures for placement. That was that's been a big barrier in other states.
Speaker 1:So yeah, seeing the issues and not talking about it only, but then, like again, just do the work. You know it's interesting. There's a microcosm of that happening in California, where the Central Valley is probably perhaps the most politically red, and in that place some of the colleges there are leaders in dual enrollment, they're leaders in guided pathways and they have pretty good outcomes with students of color. So again, it's just a hypothesis.
Speaker 2:One thing that's unique for dual enrollment nationally is that it's it's very invest in it to address, you know, affordability of college, to increase college access, and I think that's good. I think we want these programs to really work for every student and they haven't, historically, they haven't fully lived up to that potential yet. But in many places, you know, I hope to say a growing number of colleges and their partners are really kind of seeing the full potential and I think that folks, if you talk to practitioners who are doing the work, I think they largely get this, they see the potential here. But it's really about, okay, how do we get leadership, how do we get the investments on board to realize this potential? Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because this is increasingly, you know, important for the bottom line, for colleges, and I think, as enrollment trends are going to continue, it's going to be increasingly, you know, colleges won't be able to, they won't afford, they won't be able to afford not to take, you know, a different approach to dual enrollment.
Speaker 1:And so, to wind down here, this last question, John, because we want to move beyond the the all the talk about equity and again, do the work, just do the work. Let's say there are listeners here. They're the newly minted director of dual enrollment. Their institution has a partnership with one out of the 10 high schools that they have and they offer just one or two courses, and this dual enrollment director has been brought in to move beyond the talk, because there's been a lot of talk for many years. They finally got the position up and running. They finally have some resources to put behind it. What would be your advice to this new director of dual enrollment to help them be successful in their first couple of years? Well, beyond, right, but like what are some things that you really need to do in this first or two years?
Speaker 2:Well, I am a researcher so I'm always drawn to the data side of it. So I think like, starting from that, um, quantitative I'll speak qualitative and quantitatively but like quantitatively, if I was in a new position getting there, I would want to just look to see like who are all my high school partners, sort of in rank order by size of current dual enrollment, and then for every each of those high schools, I want to see like what's the sort of racial breakdown of that high school? Is it a title one school? Is it serving like a lot of low income families or not? And try to think like widely about, like you know, there might be some high schools that don't have a lot of students but or even no students. But who's in our service area, like what's the pool of potential high school students in the area, and to really think about at that school by school level, because each one of those schools is a building, is a principal, and then you know who the person is that you need to reach out to. And if I'm looking at that list, I want to, okay, I'm thinking like what are our big partners that we can really strengthen? What are the partners that maybe should be bigger, because they've got like 2000 students enrolled in their school and we've got 20 of them in dual enrollment. Where are my Title I high schools Like which are the schools that are kind of underrepresented? So I want to think on a school-by-school level with that disaggregated data and in each school I know, as a principal, that I can reach out to so that can be very specific into partnership development. You've got to build a relationship, you know, and it's going to you kind of have to, you got to go to them, you got to act with them, um, um, a mindset of service, because dual enrollment is one of a million things that a high school principal is doing. It might not be the highest priority but, um, that I what we've heard they really do appreciate consistent, sustained, reliable, you know, following up, being reliable effort for outreach.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking, I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking like qualitatively, you know, talking to students that we have, or rapid dual enrollment students, like, what do they want? What do they like on these programs? What do they want? What are the barriers? You know that maybe they're in it, sure, but like what are they hearing from their friends around why they didn't take dual enrollment? So, understanding what the barriers are and really kind of thinking about how do we start busting these barriers, the application, you know, the lack of awareness, the lack of course offering.
Speaker 2:So, getting at the barriers and, you know, I think, kind of getting to that, to that data, I know, if the listeners in California you know, which has been, I think, historically more at the college based dual enrollment. There is the CCAP agreements that allow high school courses to be, or college courses to be, offered at the high school. So one of the benefits of offering the college course at the high school is it's a much you know there's not as many access barriers because students don't have to travel to the college, they can take the course during the school day. So thinking about those real big structural barriers that have a disproportionate effect and are creating the results in terms of gaps and access. So that's all about access.
Speaker 2:But then I'd really be thinking about how, if we're going to double or triple this focused, triple dual enrollment focused on the high schools and communities that are the least well represented right now, how are we going to make sure that we're going to keep the quality high and increase the supports in the classroom so that we keep our 90 and 95 percent course pass rates for these dual enrollment courses or whatever they are, our 90 and 95% course pass rates for these dual enrollment courses or whatever they are, and and offer just any college course to give that college experience and make students boost that confidence of like I can be a college student.
Speaker 2:A college professor said I can do this. That's all like the magic, the special sauce. But then also how, what's the advising and other sort of supports and instruction to help students see how that college course can fit into a longer term game plan for them after high school, a post-secondary game plan, because they're getting exposure to the college's programs, the college's meta majors or whatever. You know, all that good guide, pathway stuff around helping students explore, you know, connect to their interests, have an inspiring course, build a plan. How is that going to extend and start in dual enrollment and really be an on-ramp into the college's offerings, including, and very much especially including, the transfer pathways to bachelor's degrees and beyond?
Speaker 1:What beautiful advice to help someone do the work. John, thank you for that. Thank you so much for participating in the Student Success Podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation and, you know, stay in touch. I want to know, I want to keep learning what you're learning.
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure, We'll do that. Good to see you again, john. Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast. Each episode has show notes which include helpful links and necessary follow-up information to help you get results. Please consider subscribing to the Continuous Learning Institute website. There are no advertisements, it's simply updates about articles, tools, resources, podcasts, etc. All tailored for you. Resources, podcasts, etc. All tailored for you, the practitioner. Thank you.
