The Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville today released a research brief examining characteristics of high schools and dual credit participation rates.
The project, titled “Who Has Access to Dual Credit in Illinois? Examining High School Characteristics and Dual Credit Participation Rates,” was conducted jointly by Dr. Eric Lichtenberger from the IERC and Dr. Jason Taylor, a researcher from the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Research, including evidence from Illinois, has shown tangible benefits related to dual credit participation, such as increasing students’ chances of enrolling in college and decreased time to degree completion,” Lichtenberger said. “However, access to dual credit appears to be unequal depending on the high school students attend.”
The study cites previous research that has shown an association between student characteristics and dual credit participation. “The literature suggests that dual credit is more likely to be available to white, middle- and upper-income, and higher achieving students, as opposed to students who are historically underrepresented in higher education, such as students of color” Taylor said.
As Taylor notes, the researchers aimed to measure the potential differences in high schools’ dual credit participation rates and determine how those differences were associated with high school characteristics.
In order to do this, Taylor said the researchers conducting the study used a longitudinal database that included the entire Illinois public high school graduating class in 2003. Dual credit participation was tracked throughout high school enrollment, although most of it occurred during the junior and senior years.
The study found that high school dual credit participation rates ranged from 0 percent to 88 percent and that students’ access to dual credit is partially dependent on a high school’s geographic location and the composition of the student body, said Lichtenberger.
“High schools in towns or rural areas, as well as high schools in the central and southern parts of Illinois, had higher dual credit participation rates relative to other areas, namely Chicago,” Lichtenberger said.
The study concluded that high schools with the largest share of students participating in dual credit tended to excel on other measures of academic performance, in addition to measures of student attendance and graduation. The researchers also found that schools with higher rates of dual credit participation had larger proportions of white students and smaller proportions of low-income students.
“It is important to recognize these results are descriptive, and we are pursuing additional inferential analyses with these data. We also know that dual credit participation in Illinois has expanded dramatically since 2003, so we are planning an analysis with more recent data,” Taylor said. “Nevertheless, these data suggest there are large inequities in students’ access to college courses.”
Lichtenberger and Taylor will present these results at the Lt. Governor’s “Scaling Up: Effective Practices in Higher Education Conference” in Normal, on Thursday, Oct.31.
The IERC, established in 2000, provides Illinois with education research to support education policy making and program development for preschool through graduate school.
In accordance with its mission, the IERC undertakes independent research and policy analysis, which informs and strengthens Illinois’ commitment to providing a seamless system of educational opportunities for its citizens.
For more information about the IERC, and its research visit www.siue.edu/ierc, follow the organization on Facebook and Twitter @IERC_SIUE, email ierc@siue.edu, or call 618-650-2840, or toll-free, 866-799-4372.