State Policy Center: Increasing the Number of Dual Enrollment Educators by Covering the Cost of Needed Education and Credentials, in Exchange for Teaching Service
Approximately one in three (34 percent) high school students currently take college courses nationwide. New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that in the 2022-23 academic year, nearly 2.5 million students took at least one dual enrollment course. Among students taking early college course opportunities, 80 percent will take such courses in their own school rather than on the campus of a community college or four-year university (sometimes called concurrent enrollment).
Increased enrollment in these programs, however, has placed strain on many state education systems as they seek to identify enough qualified educators to provide quality dual or concurrent enrollment courses. In many states, dual enrollment educators are required to meet the certification requirements for postsecondary faculty, including often holding a subject-area relevant master’s degree, beyond the regular certification needed to teach high school courses in the same subject areas. Obtaining this additional certification level and identifying teachers with the relevant additional certifications in the needed subject-areas can be difficult for many school districts, especially for small and rural school districts seeking to offer their students a broad range of opportunities to earn postsecondary credit before graduation.
States have pursued many policy proposals to increase the number of qualified dual enrollment educators. Below, All4Ed provides a model bill designed to develop a program to cover tuition costs for credentials educators need to be certified to teach dual enrollment (for example, Master’s degrees where relevant) in exchange for a certain number of years of service teaching dual enrollment in the state. The bill includes provisions for repayment where conditions are not met and for other exceptions for hardship or impossibility. To discuss this, or other proposals for increasing certified dual enrollment educators, in your state, please contact All4Ed’s team at jellis@all4ed.org.
States use a broad range of terms to talk about early college credit opportunities for high school students. Often these terms are created for purposes of funding, regulatory oversight, and general organization, though they can cause confusion where states often use similar terms to mean different things.
Some states use dual enrollment, dual credit, concurrent enrollment, and early college credit interchangeably, while others use different terms to denote whether the courses are taught in a physical high school, on a college campus, or if dual credit is awarded at all (versus only postsecondary credit).
For purposes of the State Policy Center, All4Ed uses the term dual enrollment to encapsulate all of these opportunities. When using dual enrollment, All4Ed means an opportunity to earn both secondary and postsecondary credit simultaneously, whether offered in a physical high school, on a college campus, or virtually; and whether taught by a dual enrollment certified secondary instructor or by a postsecondary faculty member. When adjusting model bills to a state, these terms should be replaced with the relevant language currently in common usage in the state’s education system.
Model Policy
Dual Enrollment Educator Licensure and Loan Program: Increasing Educators to Increase Dual Enrollment Access
Click HERE to download
