HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: A QUANTCRIT, INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS OF DUAL ENROLLMENT

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to widen racial educational achievement and attainment gaps in the United States, reinforcing a need to understand how education policy can work to advance racial equity. Dual enrollment (DE) programs offer a potential policy solution that could increase college-going for these students as participation has consistently been associated with increased rates of college-going and completion. These prior findings are heterogeneous among student demographics. This study expands on this prior research on DE by examining how access to DE and benefits from participation may have differential benefits based one’s intersectional identities. Using a critical quantitative framework, QuantCrit, and multiple national datasets this study investigates three related questions. First, using IPEDS and the American Community Survey and logistic regression I investigate how do demographics of areas of the United States with limited access to widely accessible colleges and universities (called college access deserts) vary from those with greater access? I then consider access to DE with the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection: 2017-18 and linear probability models by examining how access to DE varied across the United States, with attention to Black females and males. Finally, with the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 and linear probability models, I investigate if participation in DE is associated with increased probabilities of attending postsecondary education and does this association vary for Black people based on their gender. I find that areas of the United States that have less access to widely accessible public colleges have lower proportions of Black people, but higher proportions of American Indian/Alaskan Native residents. Analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection indicates that high schools with less access to widely accessible public colleges were more likely to offer DE. However, schools with higher percentages of Black students and male students are less likely to offer DE. The HSLS analysis shows that DE is positively associated with postsecondary attendance. Of postsecondary enrollees, DE participants were more likely to enroll in four-year institutions, but this increased probability may vary by gender as female DE participants had greater increased probabilities of enrolling in four-year institutions than male DE participants. Taken together, this study’s findings indicate that DE can be a policy to advance postsecondary attendance for all students – however current access is racialized. These findings show that expanding DE for all students could increase postsecondary attendance. I conclude with recommendations for dual enrollment programs to broaden access in areas of the United States with widely accessible public colleges and the utility of open science and anti-racist quantitative methods in educational research.