Dual‐Credit Courses and the Road to College: Experimental Evidence from Tennessee

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte.Dual-credit courses expose high school students to college-level content and provide the opportunity to earn college credits, in part to smooth the transition to college. With the Tennessee Department of Education, we conduct the first randomized controlled trial of the effects of dual-credit math coursework on a range of high school and college outcomes.We find that the dual-credit advanced algebra course alters students' subsequent high school math course-taking, reducing enrollment in remedial math and boosting enrollment in precalculus and Advanced Placement math courses. We fail to detect an effect of the dual-credit math course on overall rates of college enrollment. However, the course induces some students to choose four-year universities instead of two-year colleges, particularly for those in the middle of the math achievement distribution and those first exposed to the opportunity to take the course in 11 th rather than 12 th grade. We see limited evidence of improvements in early math performance during college. JEL Classification:I21, I23, I24, I28Nate.Schwartz@tn.gov; and Dynarski at dynarski@umich.edu. All opinions and any errors are our own.the opportunity to enroll in the course in 11 th grade. Among college-goers in that middleachieving group, we find that participation in the dual-credit math course reduces the likelihood of withdrawing from a college-level math course within one year of high school completion.However, apart from this finding, we see little evidence of improvements in early math performance during college due to enrollment in the dual-credit high school math course.The paper unfolds as follows: In the next section we describe the Tennessee policy context from which the dual-credit initiative arose and then detail specific elements of the dual-credit math course. Section III describes the data and our empirical approach. Section IV presents the main results. Section V discusses implementation in schools and costs of the dual-credit initiative. Section VI concludes.

College Acceleration for All? Mapping Racial Gaps in Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment Participation

“…In a similar vein, a number of quasi-experimental studies also identified positive impacts of DE participation on a variety of academic outcomes, including high school graduation, college enrollment, college persistence, college GPA, and postsecondary degree completion (e.g., Allen & Dadgar, 2012; An & Taylor, 2019; Hemelt et al, 2019; Karp et al, 2007; Miller et al, 2018; Speroni, 2011). A handful of studies also examined whether the benefits of DE vary for subgroup populations of students (e.g., students from low socioeconomic backgrounds vs. those from more affluent backgrounds) and the results are mixed (e.g., An, 2013; Karp et al, 2007; Miller et al, 2018; Speroni, 2011).…”

“…The number of DE participants grew from 680,000 in the 2002–2003 school year to 1.4 million in 2010–2011 (the most recent national count of DE participants), and the number of AP examinees doubled from 1 to 2 million in the same timeframe (College Board, 2017; Supplementary Appendix Figure A1 available in the online version of the journal). The fast growth of AP and DE programs is rooted in the several advantages these college acceleration strategies could potentially offer, including increasing students’ competitive edge in the college application process, reducing the cost and time it takes to receive a postsecondary degree, better preparing students for college coursework and therefore easing students’ transition from high school to college (e.g., An & Taylor, 2019; Hemelt et al, 2019; Klopfenstein & Thomas, 2009).…”

Is College Remediation a Barrier or a Boost? Evidence from the Tennessee SAILS Program

“…Later work found positive impacts on credits earned in high school, test scores, high school graduation, and college enrollment rates (Cortes, Goodman, & Nomi, 2015). Similarly, other recent experimental research in Tennessee found that students taking a dual‐credit Advanced Algebra course in eleventh or twelfth grade led to reduced enrollments in remedial math and higher enrollments in Pre‐Calculus and Advanced Placement math courses in high school, with limited evidence of improvements in math performance in college (Hemelt, Schwartz, & Dynarski, 2020).…”

Advanced Placement and Initial College Enrollment: Evidence from an Experiment

“…Our study contributes directly to the body of research suggesting that rigorous high school courses increase students' preparation for college, college enrollment, and later earnings (Altonji 1995, Levine and Zimmerman 1995, Rose 2004, Rose and Betts 2004, Joensen and Nielsen 2009, Long et al 2012, Goodman 2019, Hemelt et al 2020). Previous research on AP is consistent with this narrative.…”