Dual credit check

“As the director of outreach and early college programs for Estrella Mountain Community College a few years ago, Catrina Kranich noticed a “disconnect” in how well high school students and their families understood dual enrollment. Part of the Maricopa Community College District in Arizona, Estrella Mountain has partnerships with about 15 high schools in the western Phoenix metropolitan area. Many parents in these communities never attended college themselves, and so they don’t have any frame of reference for understanding how early college programs work. Estrella Mountain has early college advisors on the ground in its partner high schools. These “embedded” advisors travel from school to school and talk with students about dual enrollment. But as students would go home and talk with their parents, something was getting lost in translation. “It was like a game of telephone,” Kranich said, where the message becomes distorted as it’s passed through an intermediary. This article comes from the current issue of the Community College Journal, the bimonthly magazine of the American Association of Community Colleges . As part of her doctoral dissertation at Arizona State University, Kranich – who is now the dean of students at Estrella Mountain – had to identify a problem in her area of expertise and develop a strategy for addressing it. “I saw an opportunity to engage with parents more directly, so they would better understand what dual enrollment was and how it worked,” she said. “I thought that would increase our participation.” Working with Agua Fria Union High School District, Kranich devised family workshops in which Estrella Mountain advisers met with students and their parents together to present the information. As a result of this simple change, dual-enrollment participation at Agua Fria soared – from about 14% of students whose families didn’t attend the workshops to 60% whose families did. These family workshops are one example of how community colleges have learned valuable lessons in implementing dual enrollment successfully, using strategies such as engaging with families directly, promoting dual enrollment beginning in middle school, thinking strategically about which courses to include in dual-enrollment programs, and nurturing relationships with partner high schools. Engage families When Kranich became the director of early college programs at Estrella Mountain, dual enrollment at the college totaled anywhere from 400 to 600 students per semester. Today, that number is more than 2,000, suggesting the value of engaging with parents directly. Before implementing family workshops, Kranich realized that parents held many misconceptions about dual enrollment. For instance, many parents assumed students had to travel to the Estrella Mountain campus to take dual-enrollment courses, or that these were extra courses students had to take in addition to their required high school classes, or that students had to be honors students to participate in dual enrollment. Engaging with parents directly “obviously changed their perspective,” she said. In her research project, Kranich interviewed students and parents who’d taken part in the family workshops and observed their confidence, beliefs and desire to pursue dual enrollment “changed dramatically.” Parents noted how their children would earn high school and college credit at the same time, without taking on additional work – saving them time and money in completing a college degree or credential. One parent stated: “I did have some misconceptions that it was more work than it is, but now that [I know] it is not, there is no excuse for my daughter not to do this.” As a result of this research, Estrella Mountain has implemented family workshops at each of the districts it serves. Recognizing that not all parents can attend in person, the college offers both face-to-face and online options. Embedded advisors also communicate directly with families using the schools’ messaging and email communications platforms, sharing information about the registration process and reminding them of deadlines. “Once we had data to support how important it was to engage with the parents directly, we were able to encourage our high school districts to allow us to communicate with parents in different ways,” Kranich said. Thinking about transfer About one-quarter of the students who take dual-enrollment courses enroll at Estrella Mountain or another Maricopa system college when they graduate, while many others go on to a four-year institution instead. “Students who participate in dual enrollment have a huge opportunity to earn a college degree or credential,” Kranich said, “including those who didn’t think college was for them initially.” Estrella Mountain has been intentional about its choice of dual-enrollment offerings. “Some of our most popular classes are English 101, college algebra and precalculus,” Kranich said. “We try to offer classes that fall within students’ general education requirements to support transfer to a university if that’s what students want.” There’s more to this article. Read the rest in CC Journal online. The post Dual credit check first appeared on Community College Daily .

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