In this Education Week article, reporter Alyson Klein addresses policymakers' questions about the quality of dual enrollment programs. CCRC Senior Research Associate Melinda Mechur Karp provides insight into the issue.

According to the article:

Over the past decade, much of the attention to dual enrollment has focused on expansion and funding. Some individual programs—and increasingly, states—are working, however, to ensure that quality goes along with the proliferation. They want courses that are challenging enough to warrant college credit and that can effectively prepare students for higher education.

“It’s a real struggle. How do you expand access without diluting quality?” said Melinda Mechur Karp, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, based at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. “There’s some growing pains as [dual-enrollment options] go from small-scale to much more prominent and enthusiastically embraced programs.”

--Subscribers to Education Week can read the article in its entirety at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/01/44dualenrollment.h26.html?tmp=130227290

--Learn more about CCRC's research on dual enrollment programs