Statewide efforts to increase rates of dual enrollment participation among high school students were paying off prior to the pandemic, but have stalled since students returned to in-person instruction, according to a recent breakdown from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).
Focused on dual enrollment participation between high schools and community colleges, researchers found that participation increased steadily over the years, from 12.7 percent among the 2015–16 graduating cohort to 22.8 percent among the 2019–20 cohort, and then leveled off for the cohorts graduating since the pandemic.
Those years of growth coincide with expanded state and local efforts to boost participation. In 2016, California enacted Assembly Bill 288 in 2016 and extended it with AB 30 in 2019, known as the College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) partnership, which allows community college districts to partner with K–12 districts in offering college classes exclusively to high school students on high school campuses. State leaders also increased funding for the expansion of dual enrollment programs.
That bill also exempted high school students from having to pay tuition and fees, and focused on increasing participation of historically underserved students.
At the local level, PACE noted that secondary and postsecondary educators in many communities have worked collaboratively “to offer college courses that meet students’ needs and interests, to enroll more students in dual enrollment, and to support students’ success in those courses.”
“These efforts appeared to be paying off as participation increased steadily for the graduating cohorts in 2015–16 through 2019–20,” researchers continued. “For the first time in five years, though, statewide participation stagnated for high school graduates in 2020–21 and 2021–22, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic may have stemmed opportunities for dual enrollment.”
The rise in participation wasn’t even across the board, as notable gaps between racial and ethnic student subgroups remained relatively unchanged between 2015–16 and 2019–20. In the three years following 2019–20, these gaps widened as participation among Asian and Pacific Islander, white and mixed-race students continued to increase, while the percentage of Black and Latino enrollment has declined.
Now, what was a gap of about 7 percentage points between 2015–16 and 2018–19 has jumped to 14.5 percentage points as of 2021–22.
“The recent stagnation — and decline for some subgroups — in dual enrollment participation should not be viewed as discouraging news,” researchers wrote. “Instead, these results should be leveraged as a call to continue to develop and strengthen dual enrollment programs and to prioritize equitable access since these programs can be transformative for students, offering an affordable head start for college as well as fostering workforce and economic development.”
