Since lawmakers dramatically expanded Vermont’s early college and dual enrollment programs in a 2013 education package, high school students have had more opportunities to take college courses on the state’s dime.
But many school officials say the programs — in particular early college — are also exacerbating the budget pressures already at play in an era of declining enrollments. And not all kids appear to have equal access.
“It definitely presents a dilemma,” said Brooke Olsen-Farrell, the superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District.
Between school choice, early college, and naturally declining population counts, Olsen-Farrell says Fair Haven Union High School has had to cut seven teachers and one administrator in recent years. Seniors who participate in early college, where high school students take a full year of college with tuition paid by the state, must unenroll from their high school. (Declining enrollment can put upward pressure on local tax rates.) At Fair Haven, a little over 10% of the graduating class participates in early college.
That puts the school in a tough spot. The competition might serve as an incentive to improve offerings — but it also takes away those resources that might be used to invest in them.
“When you’re trying to keep kids here, you don’t want to have to cut programming,” Olsen-Farrell said.
Caledonia Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Mark Tucker, who until recently oversaw the Cabot and Twinfield school systems, said kids leaving hadn’t impacted academic offerings at the small high schools as much as it had shifted their “social structure.”
“In a couple of recent cases this has also impacted the ability to field sports teams,” he wrote in an email.
Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, said the Agency works to “resolve the conflicts that sometimes result due to new legislation.”
“We’re sensitive to the challenges schools face in implementing some of these programs, but we’re also aware that dual enrollment is a valuable resource for these communities,” he said.
Meanwhile, enrollment data from 2018 shows that disadvantaged students consistently under-enroll.
In a report last year, then-Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe, told lawmakers that “stark differences in student participation based on gender, free-and-reduced lunch, and special education status cannot go ignored.”
During the 2016-17 school year, low-income students represented about 30% of the students in grades 11 and 12, but only 23% of students participating in dual enrollment. Students with disabilities represented 13% of all juniors and seniors, but only 3% of participating students. Boys, too, were under-enrolled. While boys were 52% of all 11th and 12th grade students, girls made up 60% of all dual enrollment students that year. The report doesn’t track disparities based on race.
In an interview, Holcombe, who is now running for governor, speculated that’s likely a lucky accident of geography. One participating college, Community College of Vermont, has a campus that’s a 20 minute walk from the state’s only majority-minority school district.
“One of the reasons we don’t have a racial gap is because CCV is right next to Winooski (High),” she said.
The example underscores a key concern over access to the program — transportation. Without bussing, students are on their own to figure out how to get to colleges, and those who can’t get a ride also can’t participate unless the college is close by.
John Tague, the principal at Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax, called the programs “a great opportunity for our kids” and said his students most often go to the CCV campuses in St. Albans or Winooski, or Northern Vermont University in Johnson. But all of those are at least a 20 minute drive away.
“Transportation provided would level the playing field for all students,” he said. “But I don’t know where the money comes from for that expense.”
Vermont has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country, but a relatively low college enrollment rate. One of the promises of Act 77 — the 2013 law that expanded the early college options — was to improve the state’s college attendance rates. According to agency data, between 61% and 76% of students who use dual enrollment vouchers enrolled in college within 12 months after graduating from high school.
But there’s little evidence dual enrollment spurs students to go to college, and may be simply capturing students that would have gone on to pursue higher education anyway. The Agency of Education report notes that despite increasing rates of participation in both dual enrollment and early college, the overall percentage of Vermonters going on to college hasn’t budged.
“It doesn’t seem yet to be moving people to college who wouldn’t be already,” Holcombe said.