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Determinants of Students' Success: The Role of Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment Programs

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Speroni asked which of the two ways to earn college credit in high school predicts better outcomes, using complete records for two Florida graduating classes. Dual enrollment students were more likely to go to college; AP students were more likely to start at a four-year institution. By the time anyone finished a bachelor’s degree the difference had mostly closed. The finding that changed how people read this literature is buried in the detail: the entire dual enrollment effect came from courses taken at the community college campus. Students who took dual enrollment only inside their own high school did no better than students who took neither program.

Who published it
National Center for Postsecondary Research, 2011
Authors
Cecilia Speroni
What it is
Peer-reviewed study
Where the data comes from
Florida

What it found

  • Dual enrollment credits were associated with a 12 percentage point rise in college enrollment; AP credits with 6.
  • AP credits were associated with an 18 percentage point rise in enrolling at a four-year college; dual enrollment with 7.
  • The gap closed by graduation: the AP advantage in bachelor’s degree attainment was at most 4 percentage points and not statistically significant across several models.
  • Students whose dual enrollment happened only at the high school performed no differently from students who took neither AP nor dual enrollment.

What it does not show

  • Students chose their own program and their own location, so the campus result may reflect which students went to campus rather than what the campus did for them.
  • The data run through 2006 in a single state, and Florida has changed its rules since.

How the study was done

Administrative records for all 229,828 public school students in Florida’s 2000-01 and 2001-02 graduating cohorts, with controls for eighth and tenth grade test scores, demographics, and high school.

Why this matters to a family

Where the course meets is a real variable, and the version taught in the high school building is the one this study could not show working.

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.

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