Utah: Enhancing dual/concurrent enrollment coordination

Not every state has an explicit advising component as part of its dual/concurrent enrollment programming, or has a system in place to steer students away from taking duplicative credit hours. Legislation signed by Utah governor Gary Herbert last Friday, however, strengthens the state's dual/concurrent enrollment program on both these counts.

The measure:

• Requires the state board of education and board of regents to coordinate advising to a prospective or current high school student who participates in the concurrent enrollment program.
• Specifies that "advising" include information on general education requirements at higher education institutions and how the student can efficiently choose concurrent enrollment courses to avoid duplication or excess credit hours.
• Directs the board of regents to make available specified student and student coursetaking information to any requesting higher education institution in the state system that participates in concurrent enrollment. (As specified in the bill analysis, such student information will facilitate advising for concurrent enrollment.)

Dual enrollment report in Texas

Coming up for air during what has proven to be an extremely busy legislative session!

In addition to the ECS report released today that weighs in on P-20 alignment and education governance, I'd like to direct your attention to a rare state report that very effectively describes the landscape of dual enrollment in Texas. There is generally a dearth of information on who is taking dual enrollment courses in a state, and students' experiences in these courses. However, Research Study of Texas Dual Credit Programs and Courses, published earlier this month, provides an interesting glimpse into what in many cases seems to be the "black box" of dual enrollment participation.

Based on the findings, the authors also provide recommendations for three critical areas related to dual enrollment: providing each student the opportunity to earn 12 semester credit hours of college credit before HS graduation; promoting student access to quality courses; and ensuring efficient state use of resources re: dual credit courses and programs.

How do effective coordinating entities move work forward to achieve success?

Most commonly, P-16/P-20 councils create subcommittees based on general areas the council has agreed to move forward on. Subcommittees sometimes select members who are not members of the council at large—these members cannot vote on issues of the larger council, but bring a body of knowledge and expertise specific to the question at hand (so for a teaching quality subcommittee, bringing on faculty from teacher education programs, or members of district/PS teacher preparation programs.) These subcommittees generally meet separately from the council at large, create recommendations on their area of focus, and bring these recommendations to the council at large for discussion and ratification by the whole council.

Texas: Dropout intervention results promising

At its January meeting, the Texas P-16 council heard a presentation on the Texas Education Agency (TEA)'s Dropout Recovery Pilot Program. The short summary of the presentation on the Texas P-16 Council Web site provides more details about some of these key features, including:

• Recruiting--actively seeking out recent dropouts rather than waiting for them to find the program
• Flexible scheduling--providing a flexible school day and year, which is so necessary for dropouts juggling work and family obligations. This ECS brief provides more details about these elements of the Texas initiative
• Accelerated academics--including credit recovery and self-paced, online credit attainment
• Social supports to address other barriers to coming to school, such as "case management; childcare ...; transportation or bus tickets, bikes; clothing; food assistance"
• Transitions to postsecondary--returning dropouts may have college as their goal, but no direction on how to get there. The summary doc provides several examples of approaches to help returning dropouts get a foot in the door in postsecondary programs.
  

According to the presentation, in the first two cycles of the pilot, more than twice the # of students as proposed in the funded target (4,141 vs. 2,042) enrolled in the program, and of those, nearly 1 in 3 (1,286) had completed the program with a high school diploma or college readiness, and 33% (1,370) were still enrolled in the program.

The hallmarks of this program should be considered by other states as they seek to improve their dropout prevention/recovery offerings.

Florida: Students often retake math, science courses they've earned acceleration credit for

Policymakers and other education stakeholders sometimes wonder aloud about the relative advantages and disadvantages of dual enrollment, Advanced Placement (AP), and other mechanisms to allow high school students to earn college credit. I just recently revisited a very good 2009 report providing one state's experience on this issue.

Published by OPPAGA, the Florida legislature's research arm, the study surveyed 8,769 Florida college students who had earned college credit through AP, dual enrollment, International Baccalaureate, and AICE (the Advanced International Certificate of Education, offered in 14 districts in the state at the time of the study). Ninety-two percent of these students reported that they were able to apply these so-called "acceleration credits" toward general education requirements, as well as prerequisite and elective requirements. Students also indicated these credits helped them prepare for the demands of college-level coursework, and helped them stand out in the college admissions process. Students who earned acceleration credits in high school also tended to graduate college "with fewer excess credit hours."

However, nearly one in four (23.5%) of the survey respondents indicated that they retook a course for which they could have applied an acceleration credit. Of these students, 78% retook a science or math course. Fifty-six percent of these students did so of their own accord, and had various reasons for doing so, including "to help boost their college GPA and to better prepare themselves for upper division coursework." The other 46% of students retook courses because the university or their advisors strongly advised to do so.

Due to class size limits, lab equipment and materials, and safety precaution costs, science courses in particular--both at the high school and college level--can be more costly than courses in other core disciplines. The report does not estimate a dollar amount the state lost by students' retaking courses for which they had earned acceleration credit, but it may be substantial. The report offers three recommendations to stem the number of students retaking courses for which they had already earned credit, including: "[reviewing] the math and science course equivalencies for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams and [validating] these equivalencies with all universities, state colleges, and community colleges. In addition, universities that recommend students retake math and science acceleration courses should provide input about whether the exams are equivalent to the college level courses."

Illinois: P-20 council's Year 1 report released

The Illinois P-20 council recently released its year 1 report, which includes broad recommendations and specific actions for state leaders to take. The areas of recommended activity are in line with issues that other councils have focused their efforts on, such as state data systems, teacher quality, transitions from high school to postsecondary. An executive summary of the council's report is also available.

ECS recommends that states (including P-20 councils) establish numerical goals for P-20 attainment and establish markers indicating progress toward those goals. The year 1 report sets forth the Illinois P-20 council's goal “to increase the proportion of Illinoisans with high-quality
degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025.”

P-20 finance in Oregon

The Governance Divide, a must-read for anyone serious about P-20 reform, called for state funding systems to become K-16 if education systems were to be truly aligned.

This past week, Governor Kitzhaber of Oregon took a first step toward this level of alignment, creating an Oregon Education Investment Team whose charges include "designing a new model for early childhood and family investment" and, perhaps most importantly, "designing a unified, performance based 0-20 budget model for consideration by the 2012 legislative session."

While a small number of states have created a single board/agency to oversee early learning through postsecondary, none of these states appears to have created a performance-based system.