It Should Be Easy for Black Teens to Take College Classes

By Maya Pottiger Word in Black

A college degree is both increasingly valued and difficult to achieve in the United States. And with the Supreme Court potentially overturning affirmative action later this year, higher education could be even more unattainable for Black and Brown students nationwide.

But there is a solution that students can take advantage of while still enrolled in high school: dual enrollment classes. These classes allow high school students to take select college courses for college credit — in some cases, students can earn the college credit equivalent of an associate’s degree at the same time they receive their high school diploma.

“Dual enrollment will become even more important [if affirmative action is overturned] because that’ll be a way that students can enhance their competitive edge when applying to college,” said Dr. Brett Grant, a postdoctoral fellow with the Black Education Research Collective at Teachers College, Columbia University. “So I’m sure it’s going to become more prominent.”

Without the “diversity rationale,” Grant explained, the other aspects of a students’ college application can become more critical, like extracurriculars and courses.

THESE OPPORTUNITIES AREN’T REACHING BLACK STUDENTS

The problem with dual enrollment — and it providing students with a way to pad out their academic resumes — is that it isn’t reaching Black and Brown students.

“Like so many other parts of our society, our children of color do not have equitable access to these courses,” said Dr. Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer of the

American Federation of Teachers. “It widens the achievement gap.”

A 2020 report from The Aspen Institute and Teachers College at Columbia University found that, on average, about 12% of white students participate in dual enrollment programs, compared to only 8% of Hispanic students and 7% of Black students. The report’s authors wrote that “dual enrollment can also exacerbate disadvantages when it is not designed with equity as a primary goal.”

“We have to do some work in terms of the equity lens and how we make things fair for all of our students,” Ingram said. “We need to make sure that we promote these dual enrollment classes in a way that we can get a more diverse group of students enrolled.”

The Community College Research Center, an independent research organization at Teachers College, has a project underway that will create a framework “of how to design your dual enrollment system between high schools and colleges to make sure that it is really made accessible to Black students, Latino students, Indigenous students, others who have been systematically excluded,” said Sara Allan, director of Early Learning and Pathways at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This includes a variety of steps “that can help make students from different backgrounds feel like this is for them, and see themselves in the program,” Allan said. The framework will also help sort out “hidden barriers to some groups of students being able to succeed in dual enrollment.”