Dr. Stephen Pruitt, president of the Southern Regional Education Board
“Dual enrollment plays a key role first and foremost in helping students get an early start on postsecondary education opportunities,” said Dr. Dale Winkler, vice president of school improvement at SREB.
Dual enrollment programs allow high school students to take college courses for credit. Recently, such programs have surged in popularity in the South. Of SREB’s 16 member states, Winkler pointed out that 14 have passed dual enrollment legislation in the past three years. But even though all 16 SREB states offer dual enrollment, how these programs work and the students they reach—or leave out—can vary greatly.
“One of the things that we found in our work is that there isn’t a lot of uniformity around how people are approaching funding for dual enrollment,” said Dr. Stephen L. Pruitt, president of SREB.
The report noted that eight SREB states supported dual enrollment with state-level funding while the other eight member states funded such programs through other sources.
“We were also finding discrepancies within states around access and transferability as well as eligibility,” said Winkler. “For instance, the western part of a state may require a student to have a certain standardized test score to participate in a program whereas the northern part of a state may only need a minimum GPA from a student and their principal's recommendation.”
Among SREB states that did not have state funding for dual enrollment, Winkler added that one area in a state sometimes would find local funding for programs. Yet often an under-resourced area in the same state would not.
