FastTrack Advising My FastTrack

Research · By

DEEP Insights: Redesigning Dual Enrollment as a Purposeful Pathway to College and Career Opportunity

Save to My FastTrack

On this page

CCRC went looking for partnerships that had managed to reach Black, Hispanic, and low-income students at scale, then described what those places were doing differently. Four practices came up across all six sites: they recruited students who would never have applied on their own, they lined the course offerings up with real degree and career paths, they gave students advising while still in high school, and they put instructional support behind the courses. The report is a description of good practice rather than a test of it, which makes it most useful as a list of questions to put to your own school.

Who published it
CCRC, 2023
Authors
John Fink, Sarah Griffin, Aurely Garcia Tulloch, Davis Jenkins, Maggie P. Fay, Cat Ramirez, Lauren Schudde, and Jessica Steiger
What it is
Research report
Where the data comes from
Florida, Texas

What it found

  • The six partnerships recruited students who would not have applied, rather than waiting for the ones who already qualified.
  • They aligned the courses on offer with degree and career paths instead of leaving students to pick from a menu.
  • They gave dual enrollment students advising on education and career planning while they were still in high school.
  • They put instructional support behind the courses so that students could pass them.

What it does not show

  • This is field research at six sites chosen because they were already doing well. It is not a test of whether the approach works.
  • The report does not compare outcomes at these partnerships against outcomes anywhere else.

How the study was done

Field research at six community college and K-12 partnerships in Florida and Texas serving Black, Hispanic, and low-income high school students, published October 2023.

Why this matters to a family

It amounts to a short list of what a strong program looks like, which makes it a short list of things to ask your teen’s school whether it does.

Sources

Rules change. These were checked September 2026. Confirm the current version with your school before you act on any of it.

About FastTrack Advising

. FastTrack Advising works on dual enrollment and nothing else. We help families choose college courses a high schooler can take now that will still count toward the degree later, we check every course against the transfer rules of the colleges they name, and we stay in the picture through registration so the plan gets used. When the answer for a student is to wait a term, we say that too.

Reading the evidence before a decision?

Save this page and it sits on your own My FastTrack page alongside your state's deadlines and the tools. Deciding which of these findings apply to one teen, in one state, aiming at particular colleges, is what a roadmap engagement settles.

Save to My FastTrack