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“Waiving” Goodbye to Placement Testing: Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment Through Statewide Policy

By Daniel Sparks, Sarah Griffin & John Fink

Each year, more than a million high school students nationally take college dual enrollment courses, which have been shown to increase college access and success among participants. Yet racial/ethnic and other equity gaps in dual enrollment participation are widespread. To broaden the benefits of dual enrollment, the state of Ohio passed legislation in 2017 establishing the Innovative Programs (IP) policy, allowing waivers to test-based eligibility requirements—a frequently identified barrier to equitable access—for specific high school–college partnerships providing expanded outreach and support for students underrepresented in the state’s dual enrollment program. This paper describes a multiple methods study of IP conducted to examine how these partnerships were implemented to address the needs of underrepresented students and to evaluate whether the partnerships were successful in broadening access to and success in dual enrollment, as measured by course participation, pass rates, and college matriculation after high school. The authors find that the IP increased participation in dual enrollment among Black and Hispanic students. And while the implementation of the policy broadened access without changing course outcomes, the impacts on college enrollment after high school were mixed. Our results underscore the importance of pairing increased access to dual enrollment with adequate financial, advising, and academic resources to promote student success in and beyond dual enrollment courses.

Download Working Paper No. 135
January 2024
Read blog post
January 2024
  • Scaling Dual Enrollment Equity Pathways Across States: Guidance From Practitioners for Policymakers

Related Publications

January 2024

How States and Systems Can Support Practitioner Efforts to Strengthen Dual Enrollment

October 2023

Greater Equity in College Access Through High School/College Dual Enrollment Programs

October 2023

DEEP Insights: Redesigning Dual Enrollment as a Purposeful Pathway to College and Career Opportunity

Related Presentations

October 2024

Enabling DEEP: How States and Systems Can Support Practitioner Efforts to Strengthen Dual Enrollment

Additional Resources

For more policy briefs and fact sheets, visit CCRC’s Policy Resources page.

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