Successful Dual Enrollment with John Fink

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

Learn about successful dual enrollment implementation.

In this episode, I interview John Fink, Senior Research Associate and Program Lead at the Community College Research Center, Columbia University. 

Resources: Research-Based Framework for Dual Enrollment | Dual Enrollment Data

(Scroll down to access the transcript.)

We discuss the following topics:

4:45: Dual enrollment definition.

12:12: Dual enrollment taught by high school teachers vs college faculty.

17:59: Broadening the benefits of dual enrollment.

21:20: Guided Pathways and dual enrollment.

29:00: Equity in dual enrollment.

42:59: Equity variation by regions.

50:00: Advice for those leading dual enrollment

Select John Fink quotes:

"Broadly defined, dual enrollment is when a student is taking a college course for college credit before they complete high school."

"Implement dual enrollment to not just push students into college, but to pull them in because they are connected, interested, and engaged. It taps into their motivation and into their talents."

"We don't limit access to dual enrollment because we don't want students to fail. We increase supports to dual enrollment because we don't want students to fail."

About John Fink
John is Senior Research Associate and Program Lead at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. His research uncovers structural barriers that result in inequitable access to educational and economic opportunity for racially minoritized, low-income, and first-generation students. He focuses on how educational institutions can change to produce more equitable outcomes, and he prioritizes applying findings to inform efforts to improve community college effectiveness.

He was the lead author on a national study of community college dual enrollment students which tracked former dual enrollment students into postsecondary education and provided national and state-by-state outcomes. His work was recognized by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students with the Transfer Champion-Catalyst award in 2019.

John’s research has been published in the Journal of Higher Education, Community College Review, Journal of American College Health, Journal of Student Affairs Research & Practice, New Directions for Student Services, and the NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education.

About Dr. Al Solano
Al is Founder & Coach at the Continuous Learning Institute. A big believer in kindness, he helps institutions of higher education to plan and implement homegrown practices that get results for students by coaching them through a process based on what he calls the "Three Cs": Clarity, Coherence, Consensus. In addition, his bite-sized, practitioner-based articles on student success strategies, institutional planning & implementation, and educational leadership are implemented at institutions across the country. He has worked directly with over 50 colleges and universities and has trained well over 5,000 educators. He has coached colleges for over a decade, worked at two community colleges, and began his education career in K12. He earned a doctorate in education from UCLA, and is a proud community college student who transferred to Cornell University.

 

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AS [00:00:47] For today's podcast. It's a pleasure to have John Fink. John is Senior Research Associate and Program lead at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College. His research uncovers structural barriers that result in inequitable access to education and economic opportunity for racially minorities, low income and first-generation students. He focuses on how educational institutions can change to produce more equitable outcomes, and he prioritizes applying findings to inform efforts to improve community college effectiveness. He was the lead author on a national study of community college dual enrollment students, which tracked former dual enrollment students into post-secondary education and provided national and state by state outcomes. His work was recognized by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students with the Transfer Champion Catalyst Award in 2019. John's research has been published in the Journal of Higher Education Community College Review, Journal of American College Health Journal of Student Affairs, Research and Practice, New Directions for Student Services, and the Naspa Journal about Women in Higher Education. Welcome to the Student Success Podcast, John.

John Fink [00:02:02] Thank you. Good to be here.

AS [00:02:04] So, John, I started all podcasts asking guests if they wouldn't mind sharing a something about them selves besides work, a hobby or a story or whatever. Would you share something, please?

John Fink [00:02:18] Sure. Yeah. So I guess I'll share, you know, this fall I'll hit my ten year workerursary at CCRC, but so it feels like, wow, just the decades gone by. But I grew up in Wisconsin and moved out to the East Coast about 15 years ago, and we lived in New York for a while, but about 6 or 7 years ago we moved down to Philadelphia and now we live in South Philadelphia, like really close to the Phillies and the Eagles stadiums and the Flyers and 76ers. I think for a while, I tried to maintain my allegiance to the Packers and Wisconsin sports, but it's just been like impossible to shake the Philly sports thing down here in South Philly where you can, like walk to the stadiums. And now I got two young boys and we actually can walk to the Phillies games and we just like fully drank the Kool-Aid on that. And I'm really excited for the postseason. It was a really close game last night against the Mets. So you get like here, the stadium and then I hear all the neighbors like cheering at the same time. So it's been a really cool way to to connect with the city here. So that's sort of on the mind today after after a big weekend.

AS [00:03:37] That's nice. Thanks for sharing that. I grew up in New York City and New York City fans can be rough, but I don't think anybody beats Philly fans. I mean, they could be really rough.

John Fink [00:03:49] Yeah, Yeah. You know, I think it's it feels like a cool way to connect with the neighbors. So it's like you got to stay up on it if you want to kind of build those connections. And it's fun when everyone here is cheering for the same team.

AS [00:04:02] John, actually, we met a few years ago. I was brought in to help with a project at CCRC. We were doing guided pathways for rural colleges, so we we interacted a bit. So it was great to work with you. And I've been keeping up on all of your dual enrollment work. And finally I have you on the podcast, so thank you so much for for being here. So the focus of today is dual enrollment. And let's start with the very basics, John, just so that everybody has clarity, what is dual enrollment exactly, especially given that there are different ways of going about it. So can you give us that foundational definition of dual enrollment?

John Fink [00:04:49] Sure. So dual enrollment is really a lot of different things across the country. In so very broadly defined. It's when a student is taking a college course for college credit before they complete high school. And I say a student before they complete high school, you might want to say a high school student, but even in some cases, there might be an eighth grader taking such a course. So it's really any time before students complete high school that they're taking a course for college credit. And that can be a lot of different things. It can be it just so 1 or 2, you know, one off course or 1 or 2 courses that's happening at the college, might be taught at the high school, may be taught by a college professor, might be taught by a high school instructor, and it could be an early college high school model that is much more kind of intensive and it's designed so it's a lot of different things. It's called a lot of different things, dual credit, concurrent enrollment, dual enrollment and many other terms. But what it's not, it excludes advanced placement or international baccalaureate programs. So when we use the term dual enrollment as a broad umbrella, it covers a lot of ground, but it is sort of separate and distinct from other programs like AP, which is quite large nationally, and IB, where oftentimes the credit that students get in college has to come through performance on a single high stakes standardized test. So dual enrollment is a lot of different things. It's quite a big bucket of practice happening in the country with millions of students participating every year. And I think the the joke some of the joking around people idea, there was one list of 34 different names for dual enrollment across the country. Or like every time I think someone says something, I bet like the number keeps on going up and up, but it's it's generally just college course taking in high school for the most part.

AS [00:06:45] Let's unpack a little bit the college instructors teaching at the high school versus having the high school teachers teach dual enrollment. The reason I want to unpack this a little bit is because about, my gosh, it's been now, what, 5 or 6 years ago I was contacted by Cal State LA'S College of Education because a lot of the K-12 districts were telling The College of Education, the Dean at the time, hey, we got this dual enrollment, it's great, but we have a challenge. The faculty that come to our campuses, they know their content, but they're not all pedagogically equipped to teach adolescents. And so we actually ended up creating a noncredit course, a mini certificate, if you will. The cost was significantly reduced because the dean was really cool. She put it in their, basically in their continuing ed. We created the course and then it helped faculty be better prepared to teach at a high school. Has that been something you've been hearing about, too? Do you have any thoughts on that?

John Fink [00:08:07] One big takeaway from the research that we've done is that we know dual enrollment on as many shapes and sizes is operating on a very large scale. And we know there's a lot of different ways that it's being implemented in terms of just design, let alone sort of the quality of implementation. And so, there's organizations like the National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships that have standards for accreditation around quality and that speak to things like you have to have these things in place to have a quality program, including shared professional development and sort of work on both the content of the course as well as the pedagogy. And so our research at CCRC, you know, we've done work to look at the effects like, does it work? But our research now and into the future is just much more focused on how can we make these programs work even better for more students. And this issue of quality and thinking about the pedagogy, how to keep the college standards of a college course, but teach it in a high school setting to a class of high school students. I think that's a real sort of rich discussion that's happening in the field. And, you know, ideally, I think it happens in those partnerships between colleges, in our K-12, in the disciplines and places we visited that have really strong outcomes that are that are delivering these courses to a broad range of students that are representative of their school districts, but also have really strong outcomes for those students in dual enrollment even after high school. They're really attuned to this. And the deans overseeing these courses, they're looking for instructors with prior high school teaching experience, just like knowing the sort of classroom management and what's needed to be in a high school and have that presence. But also is a college faculty member and can bring in that college level curriculum. And I think that sort of like maybe that's the low hanging fruit look with folks with that K-12 in the background. But as you brought up, what you shared trying to create some training around that, now high school students are 1 in 5 community college students across the country. What does it mean to be teaching classes with high school students in the seats oftentimes completely filled with high school students? And, you know, I think some folks think we shouldn't do anything differently. This is a college course. A college course should be a college course. But any good instructor, I think, knows that you always have to meet the students where they're at. And I think how you do that and what it looks like very much needs to be an ongoing and really local conversation.

AS [00:10:52] Yeah, I've had some discussions with some faculty who like, yeah, a college course as a college course, but, you know, I work with many faculty to improve their practices at the college level, at their institutions, and you don't want to bring those antiquated practices to the high school.

John Fink [00:11:12] I think the folks in high school, like high school teachers, they have a lot to teach higher education about just general teaching practices and pedagogy and the requirements in place to teach a college course is about content, knowledge, subject matter, expertise. You've got to have that graduate degree in a particular subject, which is, of course, incredibly important about having a college course. And, there's a lot to be learned about how to teach it as well that we can that in higher ed we can really take from our K-12 colleagues.

AS [00:11:45] There's so much to learn from our K-12 colleagues. It's incredible. Do you have a sense, John, nationally? Maybe you have the data or maybe you just kind of a sense, your gut feeling here a little bit about what percentage nationally is dual enrollment high school teachers teaching to dual enrollment versus the college instructors at the high schools. You have a sense of that, by any chance?

John Fink [00:12:12] Yeah. The vast majority is taught at the high school by high school instructors. So one relatively recent national survey. So just sort of a little bit of a snapshot, put that at 80% of dual enrollment, 80% taught in the high school by high school teachers who are qualified to teach. So that's the majority, but that's not the case everywhere. In some states and some like cities, it's like totally flipped the other way where most doing all what's happening even outside the school day, like in the afternoons at the college. And I think as a researcher, one of the most frequent questions that I've gotten that we've gotten as researchers is like, what's better? You know, what works better at the high school, at the college by a high school instructor. Are there differences if it's a college instructor? And those are great questions. And we've done some work on that in Texas, where we could kind of get in that if you're curious. But where you see like findings in the aggregate, like on a state level. But what we've also seen is like it can be done really well in any of those settings that can also not be done well in any of those settings. So it's and oftentimes that sort of arrangement isn't that flexible. They're sort of like constrained in some way, you know, like the only way we can offer this is if it's done at the high school, that's like we're at at large scale. So how do we do that really well, and that's the second question that I think is really important. And we focus, we visited places with really strong outcomes that are broadening access for students of color and low income students and doing well and serving those students. And we see that those programs are taught at the high school, they're taught at the college. There's a little bit of online in there. So there's ways to kind of try to do online well for students. But basically it can be done. It's sort of like how do you play to the strengths of each of those set ups is generally what we find.

AS [00:14:06] Thank you. That's very interesting. That 80% figure. So high schools have existing curriculum, right? And they have faculty that that teach certain requirements to graduate from high school. Is there sometimes a little bit of conflict and how is that resolved when, let's say there's already the whole English four year sequence for high school and then comes the college and they want to do something to have them take, for example, English composition the first course they would take in college. How do you find they normally kind of tease that out so that it doesn't conflict with the high school curriculum. Do you have a sense of that?

John Fink [00:14:52] Yeah, I've heard of that. I think what I hear more frequently is that the crisis in many high schools is that the senior year feels like a throwaway for students. Like there's so much effort to get students past those key high school graduation requirements. Most students are pretty much done with everything by the end of 11th grade. And so senior year, that 12th grade, it already was sort of like the senior itis. They kind of like the the last year or whatever. And that's especially the case for students who have already kind of done most of their course requirements. And so this is oftentimes why dual enrollment is really positioned as an important sort of bridge into post-secondary is because we can start offering not just the sort of core English and math sort of courses, but other courses that aren't even available at the high school that the college offers that are really interesting that might really spark an interest in a bachelor's degree transfer pathway that students would have never even kind of thought about before having a really cool college course. So that I think I hear more about that is the opportunity. That said, you know, like you said, high schools and K-12 are constrained to content standards oftentimes for English and math. And so they have to check all these boxes. And, you know, sometimes I think especially when partnerships are trying to do more innovative teaching and learning sort of curriculum design, trying to think outside those the box of the sort of common core standards that can be an issue. But I think I hear much more about just like, you know, getting those that sort of transfer level or college level English and math course taken care of in high school. So students are starting post-secondary kind of without that gatekeeper in the way, but then also bringing in some courses of interest to help students explore fields that they might be interested in post-secondary help them think about those bachelor's degree transfer pathways of those associate degree pathways in fields of interest.

AS [00:17:00] Yeah, that makes sense. A few years ago. Well, many years ago. I had all my three kids go through community college, but when they were in high school, the summer between ninth and 10th grade, I had them start taking community college courses. We didn't have a formal dual enrollment program here, so I always made sure that they took, for example, sociology because it's not offered in the high school and it wouldn't conflict. Right? Art history, psychology, kind of the social sciences and humanities, that wouldn't conflict. I found that the math and science was not a good idea at the time. Right. I don't know if things are changing, and I would imagine you have to have really good coordination between the K-12 and the colleges when you wanted to start this as early as eighth grade. You know so much about dual enrollment and its benefits, John, so how can colleges broaden the benefits of dual enrollment?

John Fink [00:18:00] Yeah, this is a question that we focus a lot of our research on, like how can we fully realize the potential of offering college courses to students in high school as not just a lever for an acceleration into and through college, but really as a college access and equity lever as well to address challenges that we're seeing around declining college enrollment rates, generally increasing questioning of the value of higher education and concerns about affordability. And so by, you know, what we see and we see why this is done well, is that implementing dual enrollment as a college access strategy to really any high school students and all high school students, especially those who are on the margins about college, may be questioning, is it worth it? Is it for me providing some college course experience in high school can be extremely beneficial. And the sort of research that's the real sort of evidence base really bears this out as well. Really, any type of course, can be beneficial, but especially well taught field aligned courses that don't that are both sort of I'm getting exposure to a college level course and having that general college knowledge building effect, but also have that connection, the purpose and interest for the students. Wow. I didn't know that I could study drones in college. I thought college was x, but here I'm seeing college can be y, z and ABC as well. It's like all these different things. So it really is an opportunity for community colleges especially to showcase their programs. All of their programs, including their applied bachelor's degrees, including their transfer pathways to universities, and to use that to not just push students into college, but to pull them in because they are connected and interested and engaged. And it taps into their motivation and taps into their talents. So we've seen where this is working particularly well. We have this line of research around a framework that is essentially connecting guided pathways reforms to high school dual enrollment programs with a focus on college access and equity, which we call Dual Enrollment Equity Pathways or DEEP. So we've studied this DEEP framework and described these different practices in that DEEP framework, as well as how colleges and their K-12 partners are connecting on a shared vision and purpose around dual enrollment as an access and equity lever, and then making the investments to not just do the status quo dual enrollmentt practices, which is sort of resulted in more of an acceleration dual enrollment for students who are already university bound mindset, an approach that hasn't invested much in dual enrollment, hasn't invested much in outreach and advising and supports, and has really created what we see now, which is persistent gaps in access for Black and Latino students, for low income students, for first generation and many other groups that are that are not well served in those transitions. Students with disabilities, English learners. But I think what's encouraging is that we visited places with better outcomes that are now extending their guided pathways reforms into their high schools, and they're having a lot of success, not just in growing the number of students going to college generally, but also increasing the number of students who are coming back to their college after high school.

AS [00:21:20] Yes. Yes, John, you know, I want to go a little bit into guided pathways. As you know, I've done a ton of work in this area. And there are some states like Washington and California, especially California, that gave the colleges a significant amount of funding to do that. Guided Pathways, five years. And then they extended it a little bit. And it has its pros and cons, right? The cons, unfortunately, and this is so much about leadership. Is that they never really got it. They saw this as of a five year grant program. And now that the money is dwindling. Well, Guided Pathways is going away. And now we're doing our next flavor of the month, if you will, is dual enrollment. Good leadership. Exceptional leadership recognizes guided pathways is not a program, it's not a grant. It takes a student journey framework. And it's about continually improving our practices along that student journey. So for colleges that still, because it's been the language, John everybody kind of understands the pillars. It's what's been used forever, right? Dual enrollment nicely aligns and is part of guided pathways, right? Through dual enrollment, you're helping clarify the path for students. You're helping them enter a path. Stay on the path right is when they're at the college but the ensure learning, that fourth pillar is also happening through through dual enrollment. So the leadership and when I say leadership, it's not just the college president or the VP's. I'm talking about, for example, the faculty Senate president. Right. Faculty are leaders on this as well. I think those that understand that it's a continuous improvement framework know that I can use that framework. I can use that language to ensure that dual enrollment is part of this framework. What are you finding? Are you finding that that good leadership does make that intentional effort to say this is a cornerstone of guided pathways, as was developmental ed reform? Are you finding that a lot of places there, they just don't even remember what that was and now it's the new flavor of the month, as some people call it. I don't want to diminish dual enrollment and call it flavor of the month. I say that as how it is in education, we always got like a new initiative. Or some of them seeing it as as now this is the hot thing and they forgot all about the other student journey pillars. What what are you seeing?

John Fink [00:23:57] Yeah, dual enrollment is incredibly important on-ramp into the college. And there's other on-ramps, too. I think we think about the adult incumbent workers out there, folks in basic education. So there's noncredit programs. So these these different like sort of inflows or on ramps into college and dual enrollment, I think is sort of coming up so much in discussions because first off, is just large and growing. Second, it's growing in significance because otherwise enrollments are down. So we got more high school students and fewer non-high school students. It's just a larger share of head count and a lot of colleges. Well, what I'm seeing from leaders that seem to be dealing well and having a strong vision around dual enrollment connected to their guided pathways or other students success reforms at their college. Whatever they're calling it, is a real, like, enlightened self-interest. And it's enlightened because it's seeing a bigger picture, kind of like a more strategic like 5 or 10 year out view that benefits the college and benefits the bottom line of the college, but also works towards the college's mission. And it's the right thing to do for their community. But it is requiring investments. It's requiring some outlay of resources and investments in the short term to realize that like longer term goal. And we've studied this in a few states, Ohio, Florida and Texas, where it's a couple important to mention a couple of things for context. First, there hasn't been any additional funding for dual enrollment students for colleges. And in fact, most colleges are losing money on offering these dual enrollment courses. We did an economic analysis of this like a year ago. We found like on average, colleges, they're not recouping the total cost to offer these courses. The courses can be much cheaper to offer, especially if they're taught at the high school by high school instructor. There's just not as many cost per credit, but they're generally discounting tuition and fees like steeply discounting, oftentimes offering it for free or getting very little reimbursement from the K-12 or from the state for those courses. So but the leadership are really seeing this as a loss leader. It's really a way to grow the supply of future college going students who are already successful in their courses from high school, their college courses, and they're on a pathway to success and completion and transfer at their college. And so I think that's what we're hearing even in in context, where there is an additional funding, where the performance funding is tuition, you know, because you want to grow the supply of students coming to your college. And so from that perspective, it really is worth making investments in expanding access. So casting a wider net in high school students who maybe in the previous conventional approaches that have been described, programs that privilege dual enrollment, you're reaching other students, you know, the sort of students who are maybe not on the AP or honors track in high school. You're really trying to cast a wide net to any and all high school students because that's where you're going to get the return in terms of if you can provide a high quality college course that lights the fire for learning and connects to students interests and purpose and passion and gives students a broader view of what college is and can be, they're going to be much more likely to come back to the community college after high school instead of not going to any college. So this isn't about trying to attract the university bound students to the community college after high school. This is about taking the students. By which there's probably in many communities, like half of high school graduates are just not going to college. So taking that huge pool of students and trying to get those students connected to a pathway while they're still in high school so that they come back to college. And when we go when we've talked to college leaders and business officers and in Texas, Ohio and Florida, they have the financials, those show you like they're looking at their re enrollment or yield rates they're seeing, okay, we got to hire we're higher 5 or 6 more advisors, outreach specialists for dual enrollment. But we're seeing this growing trend of students coming to us after high school. So I think that it's I call it enlightened self-interest, because it does , you do have to sort of see that longer term strategy and make some upfront investments. But this is what we're trying to outline in this deep approach to doing moment, one that is focused on the bottom line for colleges financially, but also on the return to mission. Like what are they trying to do for their communities? How are they growing, and realizing their their longstanding mission of providing accessible and affordable higher education?

AS [00:28:57] Yeah. Again, it goes back to leadership. I seen too often there are some colleges, for example, that they're in these crazy, perpetual structural deficits. And part of what they do is they look at a particular program and they go, Well, this cost us 300K, we got to cut it. And then this one cost us, you know, I don't know, 500K, we got to cut it. And then this one cost us 100K, we got to cut it. And they never do an analysis of whether that program is actually bringing in money. So if you have a program that costs 300K, you're losing initially. But over time, let's say in retention, that brings in the million dollars. Right. It's a $700,000 gain. Right. And it's rare for leadership to do this kind of analysis. But the kind of leadership that doesn't do it, but gets it that this is a strategy, even though it might be costing us some money. It's a long term strategy to help students find a path and come to our college because we gave them kind of a taste test. Right. Which, by the way, means that we got to implement this really well, because if the taste testing isn't good, students are not going to be coming back to your to your college. I have a question about. So back to my experience. So I was a first generation college student and having gone through college and then I work with colleges, I was better prepared to help my kids. So they had the advantage of not being first generation. And there wasn't an official dual enrollment program at the time. So I kind of created one because I knew that the colleges offered college courses for high schoolers. By the way, John, the process by which to take these courses was before the pandemic was so cumbersome. Talk about barriers. My gosh. We had to have wet signatures from the from the principal and the counselor. And if there was a smudge, I kid you not if there was a smudge on the course that you wanted to take, then they wouldn't accept the form. It took a friggin pandemic to get rid of that stupid wet signature form. And finally, they're using digital, Right? So my question is, you have those families that are not first generation that know like I am going to have my kid take AP. By the way, I hate AP, I hate the College Board. I can do a whole podcast on that. The the bullshit that they make these kids go through is just, is just I don't want to start throwing F-bombs anyway, so. But dual enrollment is cool. Because it's not based on, it's not going to end with this super high standardized test that, by the way, you can take a AP course and it still wouldn't have the same content at a regular college. It wouldn't even be the same often. And then you can get a 2 or 3. And some colleges won't accept that because they want at least a four. It's just a terrible system. It just makes the inequities even worse. But are you finding that you have families like me that are not first generation that a lot of the kids that take this, a lot of the students, I should say that take this, are those from the ones that typically do take the AP, the ones that do have funding to do stuff over the summer and academic preparation over the summer. Then on top of that, they're doing dual enrollment and not enough of our disproportionately impacted minority students are not taking it. Are you seeing some kind of trend?

John Fink [00:32:46] Yeah. I think like right now, if you look like national sample survey of the 2019 high school graduates, about a third of graduates had taken a dual enrollment course in high school. And in our research, we visited places where their participation rates were much higher than a third. So they're getting like a half half of their high school graduates to take a dual enrollment course. So what are they doing to get that majority of high school students to take a college course? Not just the ones who are kind of in the AP Honors university track, and what we've seen in our research, we describe this DEEP framework. There's four different practice areas around what we saw at college community colleges that were further ahead in their guided pathways implementation. We visited in Texas and Florida that also had a ton of dual enrollment students, and they had closed the gaps in access for Black and Latino and low income students and had really strong dual enrollment outcomes. So we went to six of those sites and we described this DEEP set of practices. And they had really broadened access on the benefits of dual moments. And what we saw, the four areas, outreach, alignment, advising and support, the outreach, the first area, I mean, there were just so many different tactics and things that these partnerships were doing to not, you know, just get the folks who are going to seek this out. The high schoolers with parents, with the college education that knew to be asking about A.P. knew to be asking about dual enrollment. And instead what they're doing is they are building in dual enrollment into the default sequence, the default ninth and 12th grade pathway that really would be put on any student's plan when they came into high school. There are increasing knowledge and awareness about dual enrollment starting in elementary and middle school, oftentimes in partnerships with college going sort of college knowledge programs like Avid and other programs that have projects throughout the year for like the sixth and seventh graders to learn and research colleges. They were saying, did you know you could take these free dual enrollment courses? There were doing a lot with the parent and family engagement. So, at the schools, in all the languages, for the parents out at civic organizations, community organization, Boys and Girls Club, churches, other sort of civic groups, local NAACP chapters, like really getting the word out about these opportunities, because that's what you hear a lot. It's like, well, I just didn't know or I wish I would have known sooner that I could have taken these free college courses in high school. And then not just getting the word out, but as students are coming into the programs, holding a parent university or a dual enrollment student parent info night. So say, okay, you're going to start dual enrollment courses this semester. Here's what it means. Like this is a college course. This is not a high school course. Let's say like level set on the college expectations. And parents are going to need support. Please, like reach out if you're struggling. You know, the worst thing you can do is not reach out for help. So kind of norming on all of this helps you think behavior or telling parents what it's going to be like. So all of this is a part of the outreach strategy, focusing not just on the wealthy and the whiter high schools in the service area, but going to the Title one schools, the schools with large shares of minority families and students and saying, well, why don't we have a robust dual enrollment offering at this high school? And then going to the students who are gaining momentum in their CTE programs in high school. They're taking, you know, 3 or 4 courses in a high school CTE program. They clearly have talents, interests. They have a career in mind and thinking, how are we going to bring in post-secondary into that CTE program? Because we know that you're going to need a certificate or applied associate or a high baccalaureate or even a bachelor's degree if you want to have a good career in this field. So in this way, these partnerships were really inspiring because they were breaking down the legacy of race and class based tracking that still exists in our education system, tracking into the university track or the vocational track, the CTE versus the academic tracking between just residential segregation of schools by going to the title one schools. And, you know, we did this research in Texas and Florida, and people weren't talking about equity per se, but they were talking about fairness and what's right. And also, that's where they're coming from. And they're also, the leaders were also saying like, this is a way to grow the supply of students in our communities who are just going to go to college. So I think there's a lot of reasons to invest in this sort of approach. But the last point I'll say is that it's not the status quo of these dual enrollment programs. The status quo is a lack of outreach. Just come and ask if you're interested and if you can make it through the 50 hoops of the application process, including all the wet signatures or the send a form home to get your parents to approve the mature content of this college course or, as another example, then we'll enroll you and we don't want provide any advising, seek out advising if you need it. And we don't need to invest much in the supports in the classroom because you should be an accelerated student. You should have this all figured out. That's the status quo. It's very different than the DEEP approach where there's a lot of investment in the outreach to get the word out and the supports to get students in the advising, to help students explore the courses and post-secondary degree programs and transfer pathways and how the courses align and to keep the the rigor and the content standards high of those college courses. But to open up the door wider to those courses by increasing the supports in those courses so that students are successful. I think a lot of times the reason folks want to limit access to dual enrollment programs is because they don't want students to fail, and rightfully so. Students should not be failing on their doing courses they generally don't. These courses have like 90-95% course pass rates, very high course pass rates. But oftentimes that's used as a way to limit access. And I think we need to change the mindset there that we don't limit access because we don't want students to fail. We increase supports because we don't want students to fail.

AS [00:39:19] John, what is a DEEP stand for, again.

John Fink [00:39:22] Dual enrollment equity pathways.

AS [00:39:24] And what are the components to that again?

John Fink [00:39:27] So there's four practice areas outreach to underserved students and schools: alignment of dual enrollment to college degrees and careers. Advising to help students explore their interests and develop post-secondary plans. And supporting students and delivering high quality instruction.

AS [00:39:50] Beautiful. So you said something that started to make me laugh a little bit because you said that places like Texas and Florida, they're doing a pretty good job with their minoritized students.

John Fink [00:40:04] Well, some places where we just went to six sites. So, you know, but it was interesting to hear folks on the front lines really operating from a sense of fairness and justice for their community, despite the sort of political taboos and people feeling very restricted and worried about their political contexts.

AS [00:40:25] Right. And that's why I smiled a little bit, because even if it's six colleges, right, you're talking about institutions that are effectively anti-DEI states, politically. And in my own work I've done some national work. I find very fascinating when I dig into some other program data. And what I tell, and I love California. I do a lot of my work here. Is that I have found, it's  not all colleges, but I find this kind of theme. I like to see more research on this. I'm hypothesizing here based on my experience and an even on the six that you went to, that some of these anti-DEIA states, especially the way people are feeling. And they have to they're like walking on eggshells. Their outcomes for students of color tend to be better than many of the places that reach out to me and ask me to help them out in California. And it shocks them to know that they have better outcomes for students of color because this is a very strong DEI state. Right? And I tell them, I say, you know what it is? They just do the work. They just do the work. It's not performative. It's not tweeting out stuff. It's not social media this and correcting people's language and thinking that's equity work and they actually do the work. They didn't have to get paid a ton of money to do guided pathways. They did it because it's the right thing to do and they're continuing to do guided pathways and folding in the dual enrollment and then within that framework we have what you called DEEO, right, that the outreach alignment, advising and support. They actually do the work. When you do the work and you're intentional about these students who are disproportionately impacted, you tend to see results. I don't want to make a blanket statement about California, because I work with many of the colleges that do, do the work, but so many don't. So it just kind of made me go again, my gosh, I wish there's a research study on this. States were that are anti DEA versus that are very pro and why some of the states have better outcomes for students of color. Right. As we wind down here. I have a question. You can respond to what I just said, if you like.

John Fink [00:42:59] Yeah, well, I guess I would say I haven't done fieldwork or visited sites in California. I think, though, just a general observation from looking at like national like college level data, is there just so much variation even within especially within states. We do these rankings where we say like, how how is Texas and Florida doing on their transfer outcomes compared to other states or whatever. But there's so much like variation among colleges within states. And then when we look at this at a partnership level, so we've done like looking at the community college university as a pair, how they're performing compared to other partnerships or the community college and the high school as a peer compared to others. There's just so much variation, even more at that higher level. And I think I think to try to like attribute to like what, you know, the political context. I think in terms of the relationship to results or kind of outcomes would be very difficult to do because there's just so much variation of the things that you need to account for. But I think it's true that like, you know, really and in all of these scenarios, there's there's room for further sort of like improvement and growth in most places. I do think, you know, we visited we looked at all these pairs and in Texas and Florida that have the strongest results and they had the largest numbers of students and had broadened access and closed gaps and access for Black and Latino low income students, etc.. And they were doing well. You know, they had strong outcomes. But in many places, like there was still a lot room for improvement. You know, it's like, well, you know, your, your college going rate is is 75%. That's higher than the sort of general average of 65. But, you know, 75% of dual enrollment students went to college, 25% didn't. So like, what's going on with those students? And so it's like kind of like nobody's perfect. There's always room for improvement. It's always room. And absolutely just as a personal reflection from the during the very politically charged times whichis stil the case around anti-DEI, anti equity efforts and in politically conservative states it really makes me wonder kind of like what is lost from that taboo from the work you know kind of the the color evasiveness that folks just have to kind of they have to do is a part of their official acts. You know, I think the shift towards like, let's focus on low income students, which obviously is important and needed. But it does it does feel like something's lost for sure because of that, because they're really not able to have the real conversations or be a part of their official acts. But many folks are pushing, they're kind of trying to keep their heads down and do the work that you said. And I think that is what was really inspiring from all this research, is just the commitment. And as much as we we talk about like best practices, right, you know, like this is one of these practice areas. It's the people, man. Like it's,  we distill them down to practices and strategies. But it's just because the the counselor, the advisor like saw something that didn't look right and figured out a way to fix it. And then that becomes like the practice or the strategy. So it really comes down to people. It really comes down to like a sense of fairness that I've seen and a dissonance there like this doesn't seem right. It doesn't, it shouldn't have to be this way. It shouldn't have to be that. If you want to take dual enrollment course you got to pass this accuplacer test. It was came down to, how is your morning that morning? How is your trip into school? And then that sort of determines whether or not you can take your college coursework in high school. So folks are seeing that doing that doesn't seem right. We should maybe look to multiple or alternate measures for placement. That's been a big barrier in other states.

AS [00:46:56] Yeah. Seeing the issues and not talking about it only. But then like again, just do the work, you know, it's interesting. There's a microcosm of that happening in California where the Central Valley is probably the perhaps the most politically red. And in that that place, some of the colleges they are leaders in dual enrollment. They are leaders in guided pathways and they have pretty good outcomes with students of color. So again, it's just a hypothesis.

John Fink [00:47:27] One thing that's unique for a dual enrollment nationally is that it's very bipartisan. Popular.

AS [00:47:33] Yeah.

John Fink [00:47:33] And there's been a lot of state investments in red and blue states because I think it has such a broad appeal. There's a lot of different reasons why society would want to invest in it and to address affordability to increase college access. And I think that's good. I think we want these programs to to really work for every student. And they haven't historically, they haven't fully lived up to that potential yet. But in many places,  I don't know, I hope to see a growing number of colleges and their their partners are really kind of seeing the full potential. And I think the folks, if you talk to practitioners who are doing the work, they I think they largely get this. They see the potential here. But it's really about, okay, how do we get leadership, how do we get the investments on board to realize this potential, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because this is increasingly important for the bottom line for colleges. And I think as enrollment trends are going to continue, it's going to be increasingly, colleges won't be able to afford not to take a different approach to do enrollment.

AS [00:48:54] And so to wind down here. This last question, John. Because we want to move beyond all the talk about equity and again do the work. Just do the work, let's say, there are listeners here. They're newly minted director of dual enrollment. Their institution has a partnership with one of the ten high schools that they have, and they offer just 1 or 2 courses. And this dual enrollment director is brought in to move beyond the talk because there's been a lot of talk for many years. They finally got the position up and running. They finally have some resources to put behind it. What would be your advice to this new director of dual enrollment to help them be successful in their first couple of years? Well beyond, right? But like, what are some things that you really need to do in this first two years?

John Fink [00:50:00] Well, I'm a researcher, so I'm always drawn to the data side of it. So I think starting from that quantitative, I'll speak qualitative and quantitative. But quantitatively, if I was in a new position getting there, I would want to just look to see like, who are all my high school partners served in rank order by size of current dual enrollment. And then for every each of those high schools, I want to see, what's the sort of racial breakdown of that high school? Is it a Title one school? Is that serving a lot of low income families or not? And try to think widely about there might be some high schools that don't have a lot of students or even know students, but what's in our service area? What's the pool of potential high school students in the area? And to really think about at that school by school level, because each one of those schools is a building, is a principal, and then you know who the person is that you need to reach out to. And if I'm looking at that list, I want to okay, I'm thinking like, what are our big partners that we can really strengthen? What are the the partners that maybe should be bigger because they've got like 2000 students enrolled in their school and we've got 20 of them in dual enrollment. Where are my Title one high schools like which are the schools that are kind of underrepresented. So I want to think on a school by school level with that disaggregated data. And in each school I know as a principal that I can reach out to. So that's going to be very specific into partnership development. You've got to build a relationship. It's going to you kind of have to you've got to go to them. You got to act with a mindset of service because dual enrollment is one of a million things that a high school principal is doing. It might not be the highest priority. But what we've heard, they really do appreciate consistent, sustained, reliable, following up being reliable effort for outreach. So I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking like qualitatively, talking to students that we have are doing all that students like what do they want? What are they like on these programs? What do they want? What are the barriers that maybe they're not sure, but what are you hearing from their friends around why they didn't take dual enrollment? So understanding what the barriers are and really kind of thinking about how do we start busting these barriers, the application, the lack of awareness, the lack of course offerings. So getting out the barriers and, I think kind of getting to that data. I know the listeners in California, which has been, I think historically more at the college-based dual enrollment, there is the CCAP agreements that allow high school courses to be or college courses to be offered at the high school. So one of the benefits of offering the college course at the high school there's not as many access barriers because students don't have to travel to the college. They can take the course during the school day. So thinking about those real big structural barriers that have a disproportionate effect in our creating the results in terms of gaps in access. So that's all about access. But then I'd really be thinking about how if we're going to double or triple this focus, triple dual enrollment focused on the high schools and communities that are the least well represented right now. How are we going to make sure that we're going to keep that quality high and increase the supports in the classroom so that we keep our 90 and 95% course pass rates for these dual enrollment courses or whatever they are, and offer just any college course to give that college experience and make students boost that confidence of like, I can be a college student. A college professor said I can do this. That's all like the magic, the special sauce. But then also what's the advising and other service supports and instruction to help students see how that college course can fit into a longer term game plan for them after high school? A post-secondary game plan because they're getting exposure to the colleges programs, the colleges meta-majors, all that good Guided Pathways stuff around, helping student explore,  connect to their interests, have an inspiring course, build a plan. How is that going to extend and start in dual enrollment and really be an on-ramp into the college's offerings including and very much especially including the transfer pathways to bachelor's degrees and beyond?

AS [00:54:26] What beautiful advice to help someone do the work. John, thank you for that. Thank you so much for participating in the Students Success podcast.

John Fink [00:54:37] Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation and, you know, stay in touch. I want to know. I want to keep learning what you're learning.

AS [00:54:44] For sure. Well, we'll do that. Good to see you again, John.