Dual Enrollment Students: Where Are They Now?

Dual enrollment, which allows a student to enroll in both high school and college at the same time, has long been acknowledged as a powerful acceleration strategy for college completion. National and state research has made a clear and compelling case that students in dual enrollment have strong post-secondary outcomes in terms of degree attainment and time to degree completion and that students of color and low-income students actually gain the most from the experience.

Kern Community College District, home of one of the largest and most diverse dual enrollment programs in the state, has asked “what happened?” to former dual enrollment students. Earlier research at Bakersfield College found that former dual enrollment students were more likely to pass transfer-level math and English, a trend found across all racial and ethnic groups. Has dual enrollment reduced or closed equity gaps? What else can we learn about former dual enrollment students? And where are they now? Join us in a session to learn how we approached these questions and how your college might, too. Bakersfield College and Career Ladders Project colleagues will share the quantitative and qualitative methodologies they utilized in this study. Participants will be invited to bring their available data and will work on a plan to replicate the study so they, too, can discover what positive influences their dual enrollment programs are having on former students.

Participant Learning Outcomes:
Understand the qualitative and quantitative methodologies used in the Kern Community College dual enrollment project that investigated the impact of “early college” opportunities.

Explore the potential of replicating the Kern Community College dual enrollment project to examine participants’ own college dual enrollment programs with a specific focus on equity in outcomes and success.

Explore participants’ own data and utilize colleagues in the room as thought partners in planning their own studies.

Presenters: Kylie Campbell, Craig Hayward, and Sooyeon Kim, Bakersfield College; Naomi Castro and Laurencia Walker, Career Ladders Project

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