Assembly Standing Committee on Higher Education

Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Assembly Committee on Higher Education. Welcome to the oversight hearing of the Higher Education Committee. Whether you're here in person or watching virtually, thank you so much for your participation. I will go over some logistics materials momentarily. Please note that all materials for this hearing can be accessed online at http ahed.

Assembly.CA.gov/Hearings some of the key elements of today's hearing and structure include the following we'll have a few different options for providing public testimony today in the hearing room today. So thank you so much to all our participants here, and you can also submit written comments as well. When we reach the public comment portion of the agenda, I will ask that any Members of the public here in the room approach the mic and to form a line.

You can exit the hearing once you finish testifying, or you can stay and return to your seat. Witnesses who are unable to physically attend the hearing today can submit written comments via the legislative portal. Please note that any written testimony transmitted is considered public comment and may be read into the record. And thank you so much again for joining us today. We're very honored to be joined by Someone Ortega as well. Thank you so much. And thank you for all of you for being here today.

We have a robust lineup of speakers. Thank you so much to Ellen and Janice Kevin and the Higher Ed Committee for their work and efforts on this hearing as well. Research has shown that dual enrollment programs continue to grow as an alternative method of providing college credit to high school students. Historically, dual enrollment has targeted higher achieving students.

However, in recent years, with the introduction of the early and middle College high schools, and College and Career Access Pathways programs, also known as CCAP, dual enrollment has been used to reach a broader range of students to increase access and equity in college enrollment. When I was a community college student for the LA Community College District, we enacted a number of CCAP agreements with our districts as well, and I'm looking forward to the growth of dual enrollment here in California and with the speakers here today.

We look forward to robust conversation. In August 2023, the Public Policy Institute of California found that 103,784 students participated in dual enrollment programs. The value of dual enrollment has been proven as a strategic tool to help increase degree attainment among underrepresented students in higher education. With diversity and inclusion in mind, California has made historical investments in dual enrollment programs and currently leads a nation in high school participation in dual enrollment programs.

Yet questions have also been raised as to who is participating and who is benefiting from dual enrollment programs. And it is imperative for us as policymakers to hear directly from researchers and practitioners to understand how we can strategically invest in dual enrollment programs to help expand college enrollment and increase credit attainment among our high school students.

And I look forward to hearing from our panelists today and with the hopes and questions can be answered as to see how the Legislature can partner with our K 12 and community college counterparts to provide dual enrollment opportunities to all students, regardless of where they attend high school. And now I'd like to move to opening comments from Members. Senator Ortega, would you like to make a comment? Welcome.

Thank you. I just want to thank the Chair and the staff for all of their work and looking forward to hearing from our experts today and making sure that we continue to lead in higher education as we move forward.

Thank you so much ASOMI Ortega, for your leadership and efforts in expanding access to college opportunities here in California for high school students as well. And now we'll move on to our first panel. The first panel will be the landscape of dual enrollment here in California. I'd like to invite our panelists up I'd like to first introduce our first panelists who will provide an overview of dual enrollment opportunities throughout the State of California.

Our speakers for the first panel are Dr. McCall Curlander, lead researcher for the UC Davis Wheelhouse, and Dr. Olga Rodriguez, Director of Public Policy Institute of California Higher Education Center. Thank you so much for being here today. Dr. Kirlander, please begin when you're ready. Welcome.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Okay, great.

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today about dual enrollment. Happy to be here. I want to begin my remarks by first explaining and describing what dual enrollment is. And we just heard a little bit. So I want to start by saying dual enrollment occurs when a high school student is also enrolled in a college class.

At the same time, such enrollment could be entirely for enrichment to expand curricular opportunities beyond those available at the high school, what is often referred to as concurrent enrollment. Alternatively, such enrollment could be used for meeting high school graduation requirements and college admissions requirements to earn students dual credit. That is, for both high school and college degree requirements.

And both of these types of opportunities could be done either informally by students who seek them, or through more formal dual enrollment programs, which is the result of a partnership or an agreement between local education agencies, K-12, or high school districts and a postsecondary institution, most likely a community college. This could include the College and Career Access Pathways or CCAPS as Chair Fung just mentioned. Or other articulation courses, early middle college.

High schools and programs agreements. So I want to pause and summarize what we know from the research on the benefits of dual enrollment. A variety of research over the past decade plus has documented the benefits of dual enrollment. These studies repeatedly show that dual enrollment is associated with higher rates of college enrollment and better postsecondary outcomes, including persistence and degree attainment once in college. Why? What are the mechanisms associated with dual enrollment that are associated with these better outcomes?

First and foremost, a more advanced and expansive set of course options. But secondly and equally important, is that dual enrollment can provide students with increased engagement and motivation for college enrollment while they are still in high school, and thereby help develop an early sense of belonging and identity as a college student. Smoothing the Pathway warming the pathway between high school and college. What does dual enrollment look like in California?

I would be remiss if I didn't first note that it is difficult to get an accurate picture of dual enrollment participation in California. This is largely given the state's segmented education systems that are not easy to link, at least not for now. Yay cradle to career. But data linking notwithstanding, there are challenges accounting for cross segment enrollment. More on that at the end of my comments today. But for now, let me just say what we have done.

Through partnerships with both the California Department of Education and the California Community College Chancellor's Office, our research centers at UC Davis have matched several cohorts of California high school students to community college records to investigate the footprint of dual enrollment among California high school students. And here is what we've learned first dual enrollment is on the rise in 201516. Approximately 11% of California high school graduates had enrolled in a community college course while they were still in high school.

By 2018 - 19, right before the Pandemic, that number rose to approximately 18%. Second, dual enrollment participation varies by student demographic groups and across school type and geography. Specifically, students from all racial and ethnic groups have seen increases in dual enrollment participation, but there continue to be substantial gaps. Over one quarter of Asian students participate in some community college courses while in high school, compared to 22% of White students. But only approximately 16% of Black or Latinx students participate in dual enrollment.

Moreover, although dual enrollment rates have risen in recent years, our analysis shows that opportunity to participate is not equally distributed across the state. In some counties, rates of dual enrollment participate exceed 50%, and in others, less than 10% of high school students participate. Students opportunities to take community college courses are often determined by the high schools they attend.

Nearly all California public high schools have at least one student participating in dual enrollment, but participation rates vary greatly by school, from less than 1% of students to nearly all students participating. In 2015, the California Legislature enacted AB 288, which paved the way for community colleges and high schools to establish these partnerships of dual enrollment courses that count for both high school diploma and an associate's degree. These agreements CCAP agreements, are designed to increase opportunity for students to participate in college credits in high school.

Our match of K-12 and community college data allowed us to distinguish between different types of dual enrollment participation to identify students enrolled in community college community college courses that have very few high school students, and students enrolled in community college courses that have only high school students, which are part of a formal dual enrollment program.

These more formal dual enrollment programs have been on the rise since 2015, and the good news is that we find that participation in these programs is much more equal by student background, particularly race ethnicity. In fact, Latinx students have the highest participation rates in these more formal dual enrollment compared to less formal dual enrollment programs at over 18%. When does dual enrollment occur? Most students enroll in dual enrollment classes in later grades in high school.

But we also see an increasing opportunities for dual enrollment experiences earlier in high school. Again earlier, better for all. Those mechanisms that I described to accrue our most recent data of 202122 school year show that most participants are in fact 11th and twelveTH graders. But across the state, about 5% of California's 9th graders and just over 7% of 10th graders are participating in dual enrollment. Earlier grade participation comes about from these more formalized dual enrollment programs such as Early College, High Schools, and CCAP agreements.

And it is then perhaps not surprising that among 9th grade enrollment participation, we do not see the racial ethnic disparities that we see in later grades. The great majority 70% of 9th graders enrolled in dual enrollment in 2122 were part of a CCAP partnership. And I know you're going to hear more about CCAP students from my colleague, Dr. Rodriguez in a minute. I just want to quickly note what students are taking.

We find that nearly a quarter of all courses all dual enrollment students are enrolled in are classified as Career Technical Education. This is the case across grade levels. We also note that nearly 11% of courses are considered basic skills courses, which is important since these may not meet high school requirements or college eligibility requirements. Sorry, excuse me. These may meet high school requirements or college eligibility requirements, but are not likely to count towards college degree requirements or considered transferable to a four year institution.

Let me close by mentioning where I think we should go from here. How can we further realize the promise of dual enrollment for strengthening the pathway to college for more California students, especially students historically underserved and underrepresented in our colleges? First, we need better data. Specifically, we need to more accurately measure participation in dual enrollment in different dual enrollment programs and to regularly assess equity gaps. This includes improving data quality at each respective segment.

For example, to more accurately account for dual enrollment as part of California's College and Career Readiness Indicator, the CCI a key part of the state's K-12 accountability system. Doing so would require better data reporting from LEAs on their students participation in dual enrollment programs. Similarly, the California Community College Chancellor's Office could strengthen data reporting on types of dual enrollment participation beyond the CCAP indicator. This, too, requires better reporting from the campus level about the types of dual enrollment partnerships and courses students enroll in.

Second, we need to expand and accelerate access to more formalized dual enrollment opportunities. Students do not end up on educational pathways at random, whether they take a particular elective or find a community college course on their own or with the help of an adult to take while in high school. Formalized dual enrollment programs can minimize two of the biggest barriers to college access information and preparation.

By providing critical opportunities for more high school students to obtain access to college courses through their high school years, we can smooth the transition to college for the students our educational systems have historically underserved. Our research suggests that formal dual enrollment programs can go a long way to closing the equity gaps in college access. Finally, beyond participation, we need to ensure that dual enrollment college credits count.

On the one hand, we've expanded dual enrollment opportunities and eased some of the infrastructure constraints in partnering between K 12 and community college governance structures. Yet, on the other hand, we have not adequately accounted for dual enrollment courses in college eligibility a to G requirements, admissions placements, or in transfer credit once at four year institutions. Whether dual enrollments credits count towards college degree requirements, allowing students to complete their degrees more quickly remains an open question.

If we are working to ease the high school to college transition process, we should also ensure that this process can actually improve efficiency in associate and baccalaureate degree attainment. At this point, that is only an implicit goal of dual enrollment. We should make it an explicit one, which requires that ubiquitous goal to better articulate across our education system. Thank you. Now turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Rodriguez.

Thank you so much. Welcome, Dr. Rodriguez.

Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. My name is Olga Rodriguez. I am a senior fellow and Director of the PPIC Higher Education Center. And PPIC is an independent, nonpartisan research organization, and we do not take positions on legislation. And so, my comments today draw on our research, which examined the landscape of dual enrollment in California, as well as a study that examined the community college outcomes of former dual enrollees and so in California.

Nationally, as has been shared, dual enrollment, which provides access to college courses for high school students, had long been only accessible to students who were higher achieving and already on the track to a college enter postsecondary education. However, over the last 10 years, programs and policy changes have broadened access to dual enrollment to underachieving student populations as well as those underrepresented in higher education.

In our first study, we identified three primary approaches to dual enrollment, each with key differences in the students served as well as the structures. The newest program known as the College and Career Access Pathway, which has been discussed already meant to broaden access to underachieving students as well as those underrepresented. It was established by AB 288 in 2016 and aimed to broaden access. The approach was implemented in over 80 colleges, I believe.

Now at present it's probably more closer to over 90 colleges are providing CCAP agreements and it helps eliminate some of the logistical hurdles by helping these courses be offered to high school students on the high school camp close to the high school campus. Over time, we find that CCAP has driven most of the growth in dual enrollment, representing about 20% of all dual enrollment taken at community colleges.

Thank you. I apologize, but if you can move speak closer to the mic, I think somebody was mentioning it that they can hear. So thank you.

Great. And so to your comment earlier on the LACCD, we find that Los Angeles actually has the highest representation among cup participation. We also identified middle and early college high schools. We identified 17 middle college high schools and 26 early college high schools. And these programs are typically whole school reforms that typically select students during their middle school years, often based on prior academic achievement.

And so these are typically small school reforms often colocated on the college campus, allowing students to complete up to two years of college credits, while in high school, community colleges are typically the partner for middle college high schools, while some early college programs also partner with CSUS and UCS. And so we find that Black students are represented equitably in these programs and White and Asian students are overrepresented.

And we find that middle college high schools are more common in the Central Valley, while early college high schools are more common in the Bay Area. However, the majority of dual enrollment actually occurs in other types in what we group as other types of dual enrollment. Some in this group are locally established partnerships between colleges and their local districts, and some of them focus on particular pathways.

This group of other forms of dual enrollment also includes what is known as concurrent enrollment, which consists of the high school students taking college courses independently. Our research also sought to shed light on college going rates among dual enrollees, and we find that about eight out of every 10 dual enrollment students enrolled in a two or four year college within 12 months of graduating from high school, compared to about two thirds for all high school seniors.

Importantly, one of the other thing that our data find is that where these dual enrollment students go to college varies by type of dual enrollment used. For example, nearly half of CCAP students enrolled at a community college, and most of these CCAP students enrolled in the community college where they took their CCAP courses. Four year colleges account for nearly half of enrollments for other forms of dual enrollment.

Our recent publication also describes the outcomes of dual enrollees who subsequently enrolled at community college, including the completion of the transfer level math and English courses, first year GPA, certificate and degree completion. And so here we find that dual enrollees do better across all these outcomes that we examined compared to their peers who did not participate in dual enrollment. And I especially want to call attention to the completion of the transfer level math and English courses.

These are two courses that are key to completion of a transfer college degree in transfer. And here we find that compared to peers who did not participate in dual enrollment, dual enrollees were much more likely, especially CCAP students were much more likely to complete the transfer level math and English courses. And this relates to one of our recommendations that I'll discuss later. We also see that higher shares of CCAP participants also achieve other key outcomes within one to three years.

However, we also note that other dual enrollees typically have slightly higher outcomes than CCAP students. We also conducted over 40 interviews across both of these studies. And so our policy recommendations draw from both our analysis of the student data and our interviews. And for the sake of time, I'll highlight only a few of our recommendations. And so the first recommendation comes from our first report, and it addresses instructor capacity.

So one of the biggest challenges to growing dual enrollment is having sufficient faculty meet the minimum qualifications to teach the courses. And on this front, I want to call attention to some of the efforts happening in the Central Valley through investments in the K to 16 collaboratives. And so our report highlights some of the work being done in the Central Valley to help upskill high school math and English instructors to get master's degrees to teach the transfer level math and English courses.

We also note that some colleges should colleges should explore the option to grant Equivalencies for faculty. In this way, instructors who teach, for example, AP English would also be able to teach English 101, the community college level composition course. Our next recommendation relates to the selection of college courses and supports to facilitate student success. And on this front, we recommend that colleges prioritize dual enrollment courses that meet key graduation requirements across segments across K-12 community colleges, CSU and UC.

And so we also recommend that colleges build on policy changes that promote equity, such as AB 288 and AB 705, and the ethnic studies graduation requirement, for example, by using CCAP courses to expand access to transfer level math, English and ethnic studies courses. In our latest report, we also recommend options that help students with their transition to college. And dual enrollment can also be used to expand college knowledge and navigational skills.

And some of the efforts Chancellor Christian has by expanding dual enrollment to 9th graders, by providing a college planning and a career exploration course are well aligned with this recommendation. And last, like McCall, I want to also shine a light on continued efforts to ensure that we have linked student level data across K 12, higher education and the labor market. While our descriptive research suggests that dual enrollment is tied to stronger outcomes for students who participate in these programs, important unanswered questions remain.

For example, we're unable to determine if students accessing programs like CCAP if they're already on the college path or if they're actually warming up aspirations of students who were not already on the college path. It's also unclear if CCAP students may be diverted into a two year college when they may have already been on the path to a four year college. So it's important to use linked data to see how their journeys are being affected.

And so at PPIC, we're committed to continuing to conduct research on dual enrollment to help improve policy and practice. And given the evidence to date, we believe that dual enrollment, if done intentionally and with equity in mind, has a strong potential to help more students in California achieve their educational goals. And with that, I close my remarks. Welcome. Any questions?

Thank you so much, Dr. Rodriguez and Dr. Kirlander, for that robust presentation. Really greatly appreciate your research on dual enrollment programs. Members, colleagues, do you have any questions or comments? We have Assembly Chris Holden, the author of the Swim Bill 288 and CCAP programs. Assembly Holden, welcome.

Thank you, Chair Fong and I just wanted to first say thank you to you for convening the Select Committee hearing on dual enrollment. I think we're at that point in the evolution of dual enrollment as it's structured under 288 to find ways of where we can make it stronger. We can do more to meet some of the young people's needs who are preparing for four year college and to be able to take relevant courses.

Opening statement, that question however he likes, sir.

Yeah, no, I think I'd I'd like to because I know that I think it was last year, it was within the Governor's Budget, somewhere around 200 million thereabouts to do outreach to the population of young people who are not necessarily participating at the level that we would like to see.

And so let me ask what efforts are being made around that to ensure that there's education amongst parents, encouragement and taking the lead to make sure that their young people are participating in the program and are the resources helpful to that end?

And what would you suggest are some other things we might want to consider to make sure that the program is being utilized in its most robust way and having as great a participation as possible, especially from those populations that are not underrepresented, that are not necessarily taking advantage now?

Okay, yeah, it's a great question. So I guess first I would just say I'm heartened by both the earlier participation, the 9th and 10th grade participation and the more formalized programs which are showing much more equity in terms of participation than just the sort of independent one off. Now, what's important to know is the earlier and the more formalized programs could lead to additional course taking. And so I think that the exposure is the key piece here, the exposure and the partnership.

So again, we provide this material. We've looked at the county level and increasingly at the Lea level on the representation of students who are participating. And so there are actually great opportunities to both target both places that have high participation that looks more equitable along with places that have lower participation and to determine what is the potential hold up.

I also think it's important to think of dual enrollment within the context of other challenges that districts are having in terms of meeting a to G eligibility at other opportunities for college taking courses like AP and when there are increasingly complex pathways for students. It really behooves sort of counseling, advising teachers to help students sort that. So again, we like the diversity of options for students.

It does mean that adults have a bigger responsibility then, I think, to help students navigate those different opportunities, to ensure that are choosing pathways that will lead to greater opportunities for college access. I think the other thing I would just say beyond the sort of earlier is the pandemic did make a difference in our qualitative work. We did learn that those dual enrollment classes were challenging for students. So I think we're just kind of getting past that rebound to see back the participation rates.

And for community colleges also in talking to the community college side, those were challenged. Some of the challenges in reaching out to K 12 during the Pandemic was difficult. So I think we are seeing that pick back up community colleges that we are in touch with are very much taking dual enrollment as a key piece of their kind of transition, of their effort to address the LEAs in their region. And so I expect there'll be more and more.

I do expect in addition to sort of the formal programs, there's just going to be a continued rebound from the Pandemic period.

Yeah, I would add to that the intentional course selection, because often what we hear is that courses are what motivate students to take the dual enrollment. And so That's maybe where, for example, ethnic studies may play a role. There's research coming out of Stanford from SFUSD and how it motivated high school youth to re engage with their high school education. And so now that it's like, for example, a high school college graduation requirement, I think there's an opportunity.

And also when we spoke to some dual enrollment leaders, they spoke how some of these, for example, the ethnic studies or history courses often excite students, motivate them to want to learn more. Because personally, I feel college was the first time I took an ethnic studies course. So it's unfortunate that many students never even experienced this. So the opportunity to bring it into a high school setting I think could be really powerful. The use of data to identify who is and isn't being enrolled.

Because even if you're in a high Latino district, for example, is it the highest achieving Latino students who are getting access to this course? So I think closely monitoring like GPAs and course preparation of students to ensure that students who may not already be thinking about college are the ones who are exposed to the range of possibilities that college has to offer through dual enrollment.

And I think Etrus West and Career Ladders are doing excellent work trying to do some outreach to students, to parents communities in multiple languages. I think That's key, especially when reaching immigrant communities, who often the biggest barrier is information. So getting them the information they need to know that this even exists and making it free or lowering the cost as much as possible.

And I think That's where offering the courses on a high school campus close to high school students really kind of opens doors for students who may have had logistical challenges with having to care for siblings or work or things or curricular activities after school. I think part of it is getting the right courses and then getting the information out to students and making it as affordable and accessible.

Are you also looking at what you might be able to do before they get to high school, the middle school level, in terms of workshops or something, to start introducing maybe at least 8th graders? To what? Dual enrollment? Opportunities look like so that when they become 9th graders, they're at least acknowledgeable and have a pathway that they can start to pursue right from the start. So, 7th grade and 8th grade, any thoughts on focusing on the middle school in preparation for high school and dual remote?

I mean, the earlier you can expose students, the better. Especially because, as you all know, the tracking that happens, who gets access to a college path versus those that do not, often happens even before students step on a high school campus.

So, yeah, I think That's key and I think That's where maybe the middle and early college, they recruit their students at that level and then by the time they get into high school and they start taking the courses, they've learned about the program, they learned about the opportunities and their parents. And so there's a lot of information and dissemination. So, yes, I would say that definitely. I think the sooner you can get students involved and informed, the better.

In terms of those who are on the other track who would like to take and it sounds like are taking dual enrollment courses that prepare them for a vocation. Maybe they're not looking for four year education afterwards, or whatever is reduced by their credits that earned in high school, but they're looking to be prepared to be job ready.

So when they finish, then they're able to maybe become a technical skill or be positioned in a Journeyman program apprentice program that puts them in position for a high paying job right away.

Yeah, so we have looked at the actual courses and in the interest of time, I didn't and our reports do talk about some of the courses again, roughly a quarter to a third of the dual enrollment courses that students are participating in. Our CTE identified and again, to my last point, I think understanding how these credits lead to an actual associate's or a certificate degree and their impact and especially in again, I took out of my comments.

But expansion also means actually identifying fields of study that have important need in our labor market. So I think in addition to just expansion earlier and more is targeting particular fields that we know are needed in the labor market. So I couldn't agree with you more on that. And then I would just say again, we suffer of not sort of better integration across our systems.

We have a robust K 12 CTE program and I think integrating dual enrollment into kind of conversations around the college and career readiness indicator and K 12 as an accountability system and to think about ways for more career technical training that is dual enrollment would go a long ways.

Thank you.

Thank you. So much. Mr. Assembly Member. Assembly Ortega, welcome.

I have a two part question, two separate questions. One is just curious about how the dual enrollment programs are impacting students with learning disabilities or those with 504 plans, and if we have any research or data on how we can better support them. Because I didn't really see that That's one and then the other one is more related to the recruitment and retention of teachers. We have a statewide crisis. And so how do we deal with the minimum qualifications for some of the dual enrollment programs?

I see that as one of your recommendations. I'm just looking for more information on that part too. Thank you.

I'll take the first one. So we do, in one of our reports, do disaggregate the participation for students to other subgroups, including students with various dispersal. We don't further break down. And so we do again, I will just say that has also been on the rise. It's a much lower participation than other subgroups, but again, higher participation among more formalized programs. Right. And I would say there's probably great need to disaggregate by types of disabilities.

There are some students who, for example, language disability students we know might be taking sign language right. To satisfy their ADG requirements on foreign language. There are just different types of disabilities that you can sort of just further disaggregate with more detailed data. But you raise a really important question. And I have not identified particular programs, formalized dual enrollment programs that target students with disabilities, especially towards more particular fields of study or what the course looks like.

But it's one that we could definitely potentially identify in the data that we've matched.

Yeah, we have not looked specifically at students with disabilities, and I agree. I think they're an important population where if we identify what courses they've had access to, how have they done, and then see how they've been supported to succeed. I think That's one of the things that we often do with our research is we look at the student enrollment data, see where various students are enrolling, and then identify where they are success, and then reach out to leaders to see how they've achieved that success.

And I think That's an excellent question for us to follow up on. We will be doing some work, but it's more like on English Learners, on kind of their access to dual enrollment in the near future. To your question about minimum qualifications and the teacher shortage in K 12, it's true.

So I could see it being used as a strategy for recruitment of giving the opportunity to recruit, say, a high school math, English or social studies instructor and then giving them the opportunity to then meet qualification or get qualified from the college to teach college courses as well. It would kind of be the same way an AP course might attract a high school instructor in this other way. They'd also be kind of an employee from the community college. Let's see.

Another thing that actually, I was in conversation with our President and CEO, Tanikantil Sakawie, who was our former Chief Justice. One thing she pointed out is there's a lot of retired people in the world who are interested in teaching courses. They're professionals, and they have lots of experience and expertise that there's a possibility for recruiting some of them to teach some of these dual enrollment courses, potentially because they want to make a difference. Their time is now free, and they want to support.

And I think in conversations with other professors, like master's doctoral level colleagues, I think there's some interest there as well. So now the challenge would be getting hired from a community college because there's a lot of labor issues on why we even face this shortage of instructors to teach the dual enrollment courses. But I think if you looked for people interested, I think you would find them.

I think it's on the community college side, know who can and cannot teach is where we would find some of the issues. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Osama Ortega, and had a question for each of our panelists as well. Dr. Rodriguez, thank you so much for your presentation. Research on dual enrollment, as you mentioned, the latest PPIC report on dual enrollment highlights that the CCAP program is targeted to increase college access to underserved student groups, and factors such as prior academic achievement, family socioeconomic status, may influence how they fare in course at work and could drive disparities in who reaches academic milestones.

Given this understanding of your research, were there any college services or supports you would recommend making widely available to help these students succeed?

Yes. So one of the things That's pretty great about dual enrollment students, for dual enrollment students is they can access both the high school student academic and student supports and also the community college academic students and student supports. But often that doesn't happen. So because they are college students, they can go and go access the tutoring center, they can access counseling, they can access library student health.

But now, especially with community college courses being offered at the high school campus, now being on the college campus to access some of these services and supports can become a barrier. So kind of ensuring that students know about these services and supports and how they're there to support their success in these courses and in their college transition is really important. Also, I think, kind of access to college knowledge and information while in high school through some of these student success courses is also important.

Ensuring that these courses are transferable is also important because through these courses, especially if you're a first generation student, you can learn more about the requirements of what it means to be a college student, the availability of financial aid. You dive into career exploration because often when you're a first gen you don't know what's the diverse set of career options for you. You're limited often to kind of what, you know, in your small town or your immediate family. I think exposure in that way is key.

And so I think there's a lot of potential for dual enrollment to bring these opportunities to students because otherwise it's limited to who has access to special programs like Upward Bound or Gear Up. And so I think That's unfair. Right. So how do we make it more universal? Like, everybody has access to the information so that they can make their truly informed decision.

Not that this was their only pathway because they didn't have access to an A through G or to a particular career pathway that excited them from day one?

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. And to Dr. Curlander, thank you so much for your robust presentation as well. In the UC Davis Wheelhouse Publications, it's mentioned that there is limited data available due to the lack of cohesion between community colleges and K 12 districts. And you kind of touched that upon that in your report, understanding that much of this may be helped by the new cradle to career system.

How can the Legislature be more helpful in ensuring that data is collected accurately and published annually?

Thank you for a great question. Yeah, so I think part of it is, as I said, a linking issue, which I expect will be largely remedied by the cradle to career efforts. And so I have lots of faith in that. I've kept up on that. I've served on advisory roles on that. So I think That's great. But I also wanted to emphasize some of it is within segment kind of commitment to this pathway and to understanding kind of smoothing these transitions.

We have sort of unnecessary segmented way in which we function. And so, again, I mentioned the two dominant ones, which is K 12 and community college here. But it also extends to it counting for four years whether it's transferable. But part of it is that individual students, we've kind of put the onus on them and on their families to figure out what counts. What counts for looking at selective admissions, for example, is it better that I take a dual enrollment class or an AP class?

What type of class? For what type of degree should I take this class? Will it count towards my associate's degree, my bachelor's degree? And so when I say we need better data, I also think we need to be able to analyze kind of different pathways. Again, students rely on adults to help them sort through these navigate through these systems. I think better data will allow us to ensure that this pathway is robust.

So, for example, in the College Career Readiness Indicator, part of our state's K 12 accountability system, I'd like the dual enrollment or college participation to be a more robust part of that index. Right now, it's one part of multiple ways that you could satisfy the CCI, the indicator on prepared or nearing prepared college level. So college participation is a piece of it.

But because so many students meet that indicator through other means, through A to G requirements or smarter balance assessments, we don't pay as much attention to the college participation. But if we believe that college participation in high school through dual enrollment or other ways are a key part of students success, then we should make it a more critical part of our accountability system. That's one way.

Community colleges, I think, are still like, as more and more programs, as more and more participation comes on board, they're increasing the kind of capacity to document beyond what has historically just been a special admit student, that is, a student who is currently enrolled in high school, who's also taking a community college class. That is how we identify them in the data systems that Olga and I use and that we match to K 12. Right.

But increasingly, the CCAP flag and other types of flags that indicate the type of dual enrollment participation will also help. So I guess the request is to continue to have better documentation of these types of diverse pathways so that we can learn precisely what Olga said, what leads to sort of better outcomes, and for whom.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for that robust answer. And thank you so much to our panelists, Dr. Kirlander and Dr. Rodriguez, for a robust first panel. And now I'd like to introduce and thank you colleagues for your robust questions as well. I'd like to introduce our next panel, the Members of our panel for the California Community College and Career Access Pathways panel. Joining us here today is Gregory Soto, the dean of dual enrollment at Merced College dr.

Mark Sanchez, Superintendent and President at Southwestern Community College district dr. Naomi Castro, chief program officer at Career ladders Project and Linda Collins, the founder and Executive Director at Career ladders project. Thank you so much, panelists. And Mr. Soto, please begin when you're ready. Welcome.

Thank you very much. Again. My name is Gregory Soto, dean of Student Services at Merced College. What I want to do is provide you a little bit of perspective from a practitioner side. I want to tell you a little bit about the campus that I work at, how we serve students. I want to focus on the AB 288 CCAP students. We do not participate and have an early college or middle college. So it's either concurrent enrollment or CCAP are the two main focuses we have.

Thank you. I apologize, but for all the speakers, if you can speak closely to the mic, we have a lot of folks listening online. And I got a couple of messages that the volume is a little Low. Perfect. I'm sorry.

And if my voice cracks because I'm no, thank you. Merced College is centrally located in California. What makes us unique is the size of the geographic region we serve. We serve a 2000 square mile area. So we do have high school campuses are located approximately an hour away from our main campus.

We have a satellite campus on the west side of Merced County in Los Angeles, California that lends itself to some of the challenges we have when it comes to finding qualified instructors to serve in our CCAP and our dual enrollment programs. It also highlights some of the challenges within rural areas of California where we don't have a robust group of qualified instructors. Earlier was discussed about the program in Central Valley with CV HEC.

We also have been able to reap the benefits of that program where there are high school teachers that are going back to get their doctorate degrees to become qualified to teach in the English and math fields. So That's nice. A little bit about our campus. We are also an HSI campus, so we have about a 64% Latino student population. 40% of the students that enroll at Merced College annually are first generation students. So we are serving a very diverse student population.

Merced College embraced the Guided Pathways pillars and incorporated them into the ways that we're serving our dual enrollment and CCAP students, including the way that we onboard students. And in doing that, what we've seen with CCAP specifically is we've been able to close the equity gaps in the students that are participating in that specific type of dual enrollment within CCAP. Our Latino students are about a 75% participation rate. Merced county as a whole is about a 64% Hispanic.

So we've exceeded that benchmark with closing the equity gap specifically with Hispanic students. Also within the CCAP program, the diversity of the students is much more reflective of the community as a whole. Merced College students, we still struggle with closing some of the equity gaps with specific groups of students. But as a whole, the students participating in CCAP looked much more reflective of our community at large.

Not only are we serving a more diverse population with CCAP, we also are seeing that students that participate in CCAP courses have an 82% success rate. So they're successful in the courses they're taking. We've seen tremendous growth in our CCAP program. 20182019 we had 734 students participating in CCAP. In 22 23, we exceeded 3000 students. And for the 23 24 academic year, we're on track to serve 3700 students. Through CCAP, we offer both CTE and what I may call ADT or A through G pathways.

With 90% of the courses that we're offering within our CCAP program being CSU transferable. 100% of the courses that we offer are degree applicable at Merced College. All of them lead towards an associate's degree factors. For some of the growth that we've seen at Merced College is we've instituted what we call enrollment retention specialists. So we have eight full time classified staff that are dedicated specifically to working with, specifically the high school population. They're onboarding the students at the high school campus.

They're talking to parents, students about the benefits of CCAP, and they're working hand in hand with a group of counselors that I'll discuss shortly at the high school campus to help demystify what it is to be a college student while you're in high school, what courses you can take, how those courses can be applicable to your time in high school. Also, those enrollment retention specialists are able to provide an explanation of the wraparound services that the students are eligible to participate in.

It was discussed earlier that as a concurrent enrollment or a CCAP student, you get the benefit of both utilizing the high school's resources, but also the community college resources. What's important is that our students that are at the high school participating in CCAP courses understand some of the virtual tutoring, virtual counseling, and the other supports that we have to make it much more accessible for them since they're not physically on our campus. We've also implemented a Pathways counseling program.

So what we've done is we've hired full time high school counselors to serve as Merced College adjunct. So they're a high school counselor by day. The bell ends, they put on their Merced College hat, and then they serve the students and the parents at the high school that they're working at. What we think has made that tremendously successful is the students and the parents have access to a Merced College counselor every day that they're on site. They're able to answer questions.

It helps us help publicize and educate the parent population about dual enrollment, but also that high school counselor has a much more full, robust knowledge of what that student's academic rigor looks like. They have access to their Student Information System, or Ares, so they know what that student's master schedule looks like, what they can handle.

But most importantly, when we look at how we can use dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment or CCAP courses to help ease a student towards their high school graduation, they know exactly what the student is missing and what they need. To make up the credits required to be both eligible to graduate from high school, but ideally working towards one of our associate degree pathways. They also have access to those counselors on Saturdays through Saturday academy.

So we've tried to make it very accessible for our students and our parents to have access to college counselors. We train them. They go through a very robust training, and they have access to them beside college technology as well as high school technology. Another thing that we've done is we've created Equivalency grids. So we work hand in hand with our high school partners to create grids.

So a student, a parent knows exactly how a course taken at Mercedes College is going to be applied towards high school graduation requirements. Whether that course is an A through G eligible course, whether or not that course is transferable to the CSUS UCS degree applicable, whether or not it has open resource technology or open resource textbooks and other things.

So we've created a way for us to kind of demystify how a course taken at the college and be able to be used for that high school student. Some of the important things are also the student and the parent know going in whether the course should be a weighted GPA. So for some of the students that want to have the AP course with a 5.0 scale and graduate with the tremendously high GPAs, they know how Mercedes college courses be comparable to an Advanced Placement course.

And then that counselor can also talk about the benefits of taking the college course and knowing exactly how that course can be used when they end up at a four year college. Whether or not it's going to be degree applicable or excuse me, whether or not it's going to be a General education breath course or that it can be through assist assist be able to tell if a course is major preparation. There are challenges with dual enrollment and CCAP. CCC apply is one of the challenges.

It is a rather robust application for a high school student and some of the questions that are on there, it's difficult for them to understand how they're applicable to them. Different types of rules for the way that a student is taking the course. So for example, with CCAP, a student can take up to four courses, up to 15 units. But if that student takes one course via current current enrollment, then they fall under a different definition of a special admin.

So there's different sets of rules and guidelines on the way that a student is able to take coursework and determining whether or not they can exceed the special admit status of 11 units and go up to the 15 units. Also within that same kind of breadth is depending on how a student is classified on our campus and whether or not this section is a CCAP section or concurrent enrollment section. It limits the ways that the student is able to have that content delivered.

So, for example, in a concurrent enrollment class, a student can be taking that course in an asynchronous model anytime, anywhere, so that they have that flexibility to fit how that course is going to fit into their life schedule, whether or not they're full time student at the high school, part time student at the college, and participating in extracurricular activities. And when can that college course fit in? Where? In CCAP. They must be delivered during the Bell schedule on that high school campus.

So it kind of prohibits some of the flexibility that a student may be looking for and having some type of a remote learning experience. One of the things that COVID did teach the community colleges is how to deliver content in a very rigorous manner. So I. Think pre COVID community colleges did struggle in being able to deliver content in a really rigorous manner.

But I think the faculty of community colleges have really stepped up and found new, innovative ways to engage with the students to make it much more meaningful while they're participating in distance education. CCAP also allows within the CCAP model, it also limits the ways that a high school can be creative and how they're going to build a student's master schedule.

So, for example, if I have a high school that only has 17 students that want to take an English one a class, how do they build that into the master schedule to make sure that all the students that want to take that class are in that specific period when they also want to take other courses like an AP bio or an AP chem class that don't have that slain, that are locked into certain periods. They may not be able to offer multiple sections.

Also, one of the challenges is that there isn't a supra numbering system. So at the community colleges, we have something called the CID, which is a super numbering system that tells a student how a Merced College course is going to be applied at another college within California. And so the CSUS and the UCS all review them, and it makes it really easy for a student to have mobility.

It'd be nice if within the dual enrollment area, there was some sort of a super numbering system that made it easier for a student to take a college coursework and know how it can be applied for high school graduation requirements, whether or not it's going to meet A through G requirements. Another challenge is for the community colleges is the A through G list for our courses hasn't been updated since 20132014.

So it's hard for a student, a parent, to look at all the different resources available to them and determine how that course can be used on the ether g side, which lends itself again for us feeling it's critical.

That we have counselors available to students that are college counselors on the high school campuses, so they make sure that they understand how that course can be applied in every way possible to maximize the use of a course for both high school grad requirements Merced College, AAS or ADT degrees, and ultimately for a four year degree. I thank you for your time today and pass it on to Mark from Southwestern College.

Thank you so much. Dean Soto. Welcome. Superintendent Dr. Mark Sanchez.

Good afternoon, Chair Fong, Members of the Committee. Seems like just yesterday I was here to speak to you on behalf of Assembly Bill 91. So thank you for having us this afternoon. Great to be here. My name is Mark Sanchez. I'm the President of Southwestern College, which is located in the southernmost part of San Diego. County. The communities that we serve include Chila Vista, which is where our main campus is located with higher education centers in Otay, Mesa National City, San Antro and Coronado.

Our Chila Vista campus is about 8 miles from the US Mexico border at the San Anthedro port of entry. So we are very much a binational college, depending on the semester. On average, anywhere between 13% to 15% of our students actually commute over every day to take classes from Tijuana at Southwestern College. So That's very much a part of our identity and the community that we serve.

Our current enrollment is 25,228 headcount students, so we have emerged from the Pandemic as strong as ever in terms of our enrollment, and so we've been able to engage our community and really bring our community back strongly in terms of enrolling post pandemic. The demographics of our college are 68% Latina. We use the Latina as a part of our nomenclature as opposed to Hispanic or Latino. We have 10% white, non Latina enrollment, 8% Filipino, 4% African American and 0.0% Native American Alaskan Native.

Our enrollment profile for CCAP dual enrollment is currently 1655 students, of which 68% are Latina, 9% Filipino, 3% African American and 12% White. We have 84.7% course success rates for students who take our dual enrollment courses at the high schools. But our dual enrollment program also consists of concurrent and early college, which we are building at the San Antro Higher Education Center, which is 1 mile from the US. Mexico border.

And That's an important service location for us, because we also find that with our high schools, That's where some of our post secondary participation rates are the lowest in those communities. So we want to be able to engage our communities and serve them and create a pathway to CCAP dual enrollment. We started with a redesign of our Student Affairs team to be able to build the infrastructure to expand our CCAP dual enrollment program.

It was interesting in 2021 when I arrived at the college, I noticed that our Student Affairs was very much designed from a historical model. In other words, you had admissions and records text, you had financial aid, you had counseling. They were all kind of separate entities. And through our redesign, we were able to create Enrollment Success Specialists where if an admissions and records tech can help a student with CCC apply, they could also assist a student with completing the FAFSA as well.

So it was a comprehensive redesign in our area, which gave us a better infrastructure to able to expand our work with our K through 12 partners in our service area and.

Some of the challenges to scale have been when you're working with the community, it's a new process for many of our students and also include their parents. If you're really going to expand participation in CCAP and dual enrollment, you have to be able to bring the parents and the families into the process and really educate them around the benefits of participating in these programs. As mentioned by my colleague Greg, one of the challenges is the system wide CCC apply.

Many students find it very cumbersome, so really making sure that we have the staff that can work hands on with the students to go step by step in completing that application resources is oftentimes a challenge.

We have to balance between serving our own currently enrolled students at the college while also building an outreach calendar with our high school partners and being able to get the we have 19 feeder high schools, and so being able to get those resources out into the community really requires planning and implementation some time in advance. We've also had to work to find technology solutions for a streamlined student enrollment, particularly for our students that are transitioning from their senior year to the college.

One of the things we've heard from our high school counselor partners is being able to track where students are in the enrollment process. So we're working on a CRM, a software solution that will allow the high school counselors and our counselors to be able to see where any individual student is at by high school in the enrollment process. Which gives us a really solid tool and mechanism to be able to follow up with students and their families and making sure they enroll in a timely manner.

One of the challenges, in addition, is faculty collective bargaining. So being able to negotiate through the minimum qualifications that are identified in title Five Ed code around a high school teacher, being able to teach that course when they meet the minimum qualifications, but also making sure there are pay implications and retirement implications when you're hiring high school teachers to teach college courses. So you have to be able to work that through the collective bargaining agreement on both sides at the high school and the college level.

In addition, what can also be challenging is different academic schedules at the high schools and being flexible on our end to be able to meet the requirements to teach the courses based on differing academic schedules at the high schools and then, of course, ongoing funding. I know one of the Committee Members, Holden, talked about the block grant funding that was designated for enrollment.

Just making sure that we have a solid source of ongoing, continued funding to be able to build these systematic approaches in serving our students. Moving Forward our success with dual enrollment has allowed the college to build this work into our Equity Action Plan moving forward with a very key focus on making sure we're serving our disproportionately impacted students in the communities in which they live and in our service area.

It's also given us an opportunity to market more broadly through our marketing campaigns and making sure that we're really being intentional about using English and Spanish literature to communicate with our communities, especially in our region, leveraging technology, as I mentioned, to use that to communicate those messages and really clarify the enrollment process, including the timelines.

And we also use our students as peer ambassadors and outreach staff on site at all of the high schools on a rotating schedule to be able to serve our students through this pathway. One of the things that it's allowed our faculty to do, working with the high school teachers as well, is build an intentional curriculum design.

I think many of you are aware that on student success data, not only in California, but nationally, it's really important to get students through the algebra sequence by around the 9th grade. Failure to do so really diminishes the student's opportunity to be successful in post secondary.

So being intentional in which courses we're offering at the high schools and trying to make sure we get students through those gateway courses as early as possible, ideally by the 9th grade, and then opportunities for expanding and this is my last slide is just really creating earlier exposure to college success and college pathways. Again, I think it's critical.

It's a critical outreach strategy to make sure you bring families and parents into the fold as early as possible and give them a really clear understanding of why these programs will help their children long term in terms of career and entrepreneurial opportunities in the future.

We're also going to have opportunities, as I started with through AB 91, which is our newly passed Assembly Bill, which will allow our binational students to enroll at the in state tuition rate in our binational community, engage non historical pathway students in those disproportionately impacted segments of our community. We have some high schools and high schools in our service area where anywhere between 35% to 45% of our graduating seniors don't go anywhere. No college, no career educational opportunities.

And so being able to lock them into the process as soon as possible is a key strategy and really making sure that we're working with our Latine, our African American, our Filipino Pacific Islander, and indigenous communities as intentionally as we can to create those pipelines. So thank you for your time.

Thank you so much. Senator Holden, would you like to ask any questions? I know you have a hard sorry. Okay. Thank you so much, Superintendent, I'm sorry. You're good. I'd like to welcome Dr. Neymar Castro, chief program officer at Career Lighters Program. Welcome.

Thank you, Chairman Fong and Committee Members. I'm going to focus in on some challenges because our colleagues earlier talked about all the amazing things that CCAP especially is doing. And then I'm going to hand it off to my colleague Linda who's going to focus on some potential approaches to those challenges. So we've heard it over and over. We've got some outdated processes and technologies, right? But we're California, so we're like, we got Silicon Valley. Come on. We can definitely do better.

But really, as my colleagues explained, for first generation students whose families don't have the navigational capital, processes like CCC apply and these multiple permissions, they're really hard to navigate. And we've got some great research and some fantastic surveys that just kind of demonstrate all of that, and they're in the handouts. We also have a big complexity in the ways that we approach dual enrollment. And each one have different rules legislatively.

So we have five different ways that students can access dual enrollment, and they have different rules, they have different unit limitations. They have different minimal instructional minutes for the high schools. They have different benefits, different requirements. So I think that the next stage of dual enrollment. We can help work to simplifying all of that. We've talked a lot about capacity issues, and certainly the teacher capacity issue is very familiar to all of us. But there's also capacity in student supports.

Our colleagues at Southwestern, our colleagues at Merced have done amazing things in that. But we need support statewide and then this intersegmental alignment, right? So aligning that in between space, between post secondary and secondary is where dual enrollment lives. And it's kind of like nobody's job, although ideally it would be everybody's job, right? And so That's where we see things like dual credit.

And we've talked a lot about dual credit today, but it is really a big problem when some partnerships like our colleagues at Merced and their Unified School District honor dual credit beautifully, and other school districts and other places in the state won't honor it at all. Or maybe we'll only give students elective credit even though a young person passed a college level algebra class, and they'll say, That's great, you get elective credit, right? So that is a real source of disparity and inequities.

And of course, there's gatekeeping. Our colleagues earlier have alluded to it. But I'm going to say it a little bit more plainly. Often the opportunity to participate in dual enrollment is rationed. And it's rationed by perceived abilities, by perceived who is really a college student and who isn't. But we're California and we are open access institutions in our community colleges. Everyone is a college student, potentially. So I'm going to pass it off to Linda. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Fong. We're really glad to be here, and you've heard a lot. And I just want to speak very briefly know well what's California to do. I think it's time building on what we've learned. If we really want to improve the transition from high school to college to increase more Equitably college completion certificate and degree completion, it's really time for us to consider making dual enrollment part of the high school experience.

The default experience of high school students in California, rather than just a choice open only to those who are aware of it or only to those who are able to access that opportunity. Dr. Castro talked about the complexity.

I would say that given the early evidence that we've heard about this morning, that CCAP is working as intended, and that the data indicates particularly narrowing of opportunity gaps by race in particular, that California should really consider scaling CCAP style dual enrollment with emphasis on structured pathway programs that are offered at the high school site. Accessibly for students who don't have transportation or not able to travel to the college. It is an access and an equity lever.

And I think we have the evidence now to expand dual enrollment to those who've been systematically left out. And That's what CCAP, I think, has taught us about in California. But That's a big ask. What we'll need to do to do that is really streamline the Edcode to standardize and create more uniform rules across all of dual enrollment. We don't really need all of these restrictions now, and this would reduce administrative burdens and costs on the colleges and the high schools.

It would maximize good practice and it would better enable partners to create and scaffold coherent sequences, of course offerings for students to reach their goals. But of course, to accomplish that, we'd have to address capacity. And I think you've heard a lot about that. But I would say that the field needs more funding and more flexible funding to accomplish this.

We need funding not only to enroll students, but to provide quality instruction, to provide culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum, and to the supports that students need at the high school as well as at the college. That means direct funding specifically for dual enrollment at both the high school and the college side. It means looking at how we might incentivize intersegmental collaboration to leverage and coordinate existing funding streams and infrastructure.

The possibility of partnership means there's resources, but it's a lot of work to figure out how to best leverage them. And I also think we need to look at categoricals Categorical fundings to ensure that dual enrollment students are included in and can share in the supports that many of those excellent Categorical programs provide. And we need to also see if we can reduce some of the complexity in use of funds there.

I say flexible funding because as you can hear, partnerships are at different stages in different spaces. They serve different kinds of communities, and local conditions vary. But all of us see in the field the need to address capacity, specifically teacher, faculty, counselor, and classified professional supply. We know that family and parent outreach is critical. We know technology needs to be updated. All of that takes real money.

The intersegmental alignment piece is work, and I would say in that space, and I pick up on something that earlier researchers talked about is that this most pressing issue, I think, is that California needs to join the majority of other states that give automatic dual credit for dual enrollment college courses. California is an outlier, actually, in this regard. Students should get credit where credit is due. The state should get full benefit from this acceleration strategy. And we can't do that if we don't approach dual credit.

I think the Merced example gives us a way forward because we can build on existing systems. Of course, articulation and classification, the CID systems A to G, that systems in academic Senate have already developed. But we're going to need to put our heads together and make it a systematic commitment at the state level. We need to look for coherence as the Legislature and the Governor, in their wisdom, put out more initiatives. What is the coherence between them?

We're talking about Golden State pathways, the dual enrollment, money guided pathways. We can do this. And finally, the growing evidence is that gains from dual enrollment nationally, it shows that they may actually be higher for male students, for underresourced students, and for students who start with lower GPAs. However, that is in direct contradiction to how many people sort students. Counselors, faculty, administrators often sort students based on perceived ideas about ability. We need to open that up.

The Legislature can help with that if they look at expressing legislative intent and vision as we did in CCAP, if we look at setting access and success goals, if we look at monitoring disaggregated data regularly on student participation, progress, and outcomes, particularly by race and socioeconomic status. We can do all of that if we use just the basic guiding principles that California is known for. We need to prioritize access, success, and support from an equity lens.

We need to shift focus to pathways that are designed for both college and career, for young people. And we need to build on what we've learned in the last few years based on the CCAP experience, your leadership, and I'm looking at you, Assemblymember Holden, in particular, but the Legislature as a whole in moving and refining CCAP legislation has been pivotal in showing the way forward. Colleges and high schools have stepped up. We now need to double down on the lessons that we've learned.

We need to remove those barriers and really just put students at the center of our work. And we are California. We can do this. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Great presentations from all our panelists. Really appreciate the robust updates. Colleagues, Members, any questions or comments asammer.

Holden well, first of know this is a team sport and all of you have been very much a part of the success of the CCAP program and also dual enrollment. And I've even learned a lot here in just the short period of time that I've been here in this hearing that in many ways, I thought that it was much more robust and that more opportunities were being given.

And that there was greater credit that was being aligned for the courses that high school students were taking with the expectation they were getting full credit for college. I'm winding down. I've got next year, and then That's it.

But there are Members here today and other Members of the Legislature who obviously see this as an important pathway to reimagine education and try to find ways for young people to stretch and even go beyond what their imagination is about, how great they can be and how much they can learn while in high school and prepare themselves for an amazing future.

The chair and his wisdom has a vehicle that I'm sure was part of his thinking to make sure that when this hearing took place and the input that we would hear and the important comments and benchmarks realized and successes achieved, but also, where do we go from here? How do we make it stronger? Where do we fill in the cracks where they exist?

And so I'm sure that he and staff are taking copious notes to find ways of capturing a lot of your good ideas and observations that you've highlighted today. I wish I could stay for the fullness of this hearing. I have a flight in an hour and I need to get to the airport. But I do want to say how much I appreciate all of you, all of you, all of whoever's listening who have weighed in on this subject over the years.

Because when I got here in 2012 and 2013 was my first year looking at being a Legislator, this issue came up. We swung and missed a couple of times before we were able to get this important legislation to the governor's desk and for it to actually be signed into law. So as we sit here today, it seemed like a no brainer, but it never has been.

I was shown the legislative history on dual enrollment and how many bills were introduced over the years that just didn't get out of Committee or it didn't get signed by the Governor. So I was always curious as why that was the case. Whatever the case was, we've made some great progress, but there's still a lot to do, and so I'm excited about what the future holds.

You've brought up some amazing insights, and I think that that's going to serve well for this Committee and the Education Committee to really get their arms wrapped around it and come up with something robust to present to the Legislature next year. And I'm.

Excited to join in on that. So thank you for being here. Thank you for the next panel to come, those who proceeded and those who are listening. This is groundbreaking in terms of what it the potential that it still has to really move the needle. So congratulations to everyone.

Thank you so much. As someone holding for your leadership and efforts around dual enrollment programs, you've been obviously the author of AB two Ada, but just champion dual enrollment efforts up and down the state and additional supports for our students throughout the great State of California. So thank you so much for everything you do and continue to do. Thank you. Thank you, someone. Any questions or comments? Thank you so much. But thank you so much to our amazing panelists. I had a couple of quick questions.

Thank you to our colleges, to Mr. Soto and Dr. Sanchez for really highlighting the work around CCAP programs, and thank you for highlighting the work around AB 91 as well. Congratulations to some of our Alvarez and team on that, and to you as well. We know in the Governor's Budget Compact, there was a mandate to close the equity gaps, to access dual enrollment pathways, and to increase the percentage of students who graduate with 12 or more units earn in dual enrollment by 15%.

You mentioned this in your remarks, but what are some additional things that your colleges are doing to meet these goals?

Well, I'll just tell you, one of the biggest things is really educating the community around the benefits. Because of the service areas that are in our communities. It really is around educating parts of the community that have never had access to higher education.

So when we really talk about the benefits and really marketing student success stories, last year at our commencement, actually in May, we had a student that was 17 years old, graduated with her Associate of Arts degree at our college commencement, and then three weeks later graduated from her local high school. So really being able to market the students who have done this work before.

This year we have a student by the name of Nicolette who's one of the editors of our school newspaper, who's actually in dual enrollment and is actually headed to Stanford. So really building marketing campaigns around those student success stories and really highlighting what it could mean for our community's children around early college exploration, early college participation, and then early college pathway work. So That's really what we've been trying to do, is really focus on educating and bringing in our community on this program, which is exceptional.

Yeah. And I think one of the things that we've done is also utilize students that have participated in dual enrollment, specifically CCAP, to go back to their high schools and talk to students and parents about their experiences.

We've also done our best to get in front of every 9th grade class to have that conversation early in their high school career so that they can start mapping out and working with their counselor on how they can utilize Merced College classes to meet high school graduation requirements, ideally creating opportunities for them to have more options of some of the electives that the high schools offer, that the community college can offer through dual enrollment.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate those comments. And to our leaders with the Career Ladders program, thank you so much for your presentations. To Dr. Castro and Professor Collins, thank you for being here today. Your leadership in dual enrollment has not gone unnoticed. You guys are tremendous leaders in this space. And the implementation of dual enrollment programs. You mentioned the Triple C apply Edcode statutes are some of the possible barriers, but what are some additional barriers preventing students from participating?

And how can we, as a Legislature, what more can we do to increase enrollment and success around these programs?

I think we've outlined most of them. Right. So we put them in really big buckets so the CCC apply and the whole enrollment process. Right. So right now, principals have to give a recommendation, which they usually have counselors do, and that potentially could empower that gatekeeping. That is an anti equity strategy. Right? And so That's a challenge. And then the processes themselves, the capacity issue, we've talked a lot about, but streamlining Edcode.

Streamlining Edcode to make it just much more simple and really taking the bits from CCAP that have been the most beneficial and impactful and making that the normal default schedule, the normal default experience for high school students. I think if we did that, we would not only increase college going tremendously, but I think we would put a dent in poverty in California. Linda, did you?

Yeah. I think as we scale, hopefully and scale to students who haven't been involved before, we're going to run up against certain capacity issues around how do we pay for all these textbooks at the high school? We're supposed to provide those for free. We are not going to collect fees for those students. So how do we manage that transition together as a state? How do we share resources across K 12 and community college?

This is sort of new territory, I think, and when we begin to look at that kind of scale, it's going to push capacity even further. I do think there are emergent solutions that you've heard about today, but I think we need to continue to figure out what are the other bright spots out there and which ones of those are scalable. I also think technology is a huge issue. You've heard both of them talk about that.

I know that the system is working as we speak on the CCC Apply. It's not just the system. It's also local colleges and high schools that need to update streamline their processes to remove steps and barriers. So I think there's work to go around at all levels, but I think capacity and edcode are probably the largest ones that we face.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for your comments and for your robust. I really appreciate all the hard work and efforts you are doing to really scale this up in California. So thank you so much, panelists. Thank you.

We are now going to move on to our final panel. It's been a great hearing so far, amazing speakers. So that concludes our second panel. And now I'd like to welcome our final panelist presenters who will provide a vision for the future of dual enrollment in our great State of California. And we're Very honored to be joined by Dr. Sonia Christian, the Chancellor of the California Community College System. Thank you and welcome. Chancellor Christian, thank you so much for making the time to be here today.

To Pete Kalis, the Director of the College and Career Transition Division at the California Department of Education. Welcome, Pete. And also joining at the table, in case there's any questions, is Diane Crumb, education programs consultant at the let's not she's not able to make it today. Okay, thank you so much. I want to make sure we acknowledge here. Well, thank you. I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Krum.

But thank you so much to our panelists for being here today and to all our panelists for joining us thus far. And we look forward to a robust presentation here today. So, Dr. Christian, the Chancellor, welcome. Please begin when you're ready.

Well, Chair Fong and Members of the Committee, I'm super thrilled to have this as my first hearing as the new Chancellor for the California Community Colleges. Dual enrollment is something that is very close to my heart. And as President of Bakersfield College and Chancellor of the Kern Community College District, it was a program that I moved with absolute commitment. So I have about five slides that you should have in your handout. And the first page on the slide has Assemblymember Mike Funk's picture.

And this was snapped when he participated at a dual enrollment summit at East LA College. And just listening to Chair Fong's comments about the importance of dual enrollment when it comes to closing equity gaps was just music to my ears. So we knew we had a champion for student success, a champion for equity, and focusing on dual enrollment as a vehicle. So moving to slide number two, PPIC had put out a report in 2020.

And I'd like you to take a look at the graph that shows out of 1000 students who start in the 9th grade, out of 1000, what is the percentage of those students that make it to baccalaureate attainment? And the answer is, if this student is from a middle income or a high income family, out of the thousand, a little over 400 make it to baccalaureate completion.

And if the student is in from a Low income family, it's about half the amount just imagine that about 200 from 1000 making it to baccalaureate attainment.

So a few months ago, when the Board of Governors had given me this incredible opportunity to be the chancellor for the California community colleges, this idea of 9th grade to baccalaureate attainment as being the critical eight years was something that then formed came into shape in Vision 2030, which was approved by our Board of Governors as the Roadmap for California Community Colleges for the next seven years. So, moving to the next slide, that particular data is broken up by race and ethnicity.

And you will see that at the highest achieving end, only half of the 1000 students are going to make it. And these are from our Asian American families. And then you would see at the lower end that 172 of our African American Californians make it to that baccalaureate attainment. So this issue of looking at dual enrollment from an equity lens is absolutely critical.

I was sorry to see Assembly Member Holden leaving, but I sort of ran out and said hello to him, because on the next slide I have a picture of him with a picture of Mcfarland High School. Okay, so in 2017, when AB 288 was passed, I was a rookie President at BC. I was just two years into my presidency, and the big problem we were trying to solve was baccalaureate detainment. And how do we start early in the 9th grade?

So in 2019, I mean, leadership does matter. The Superintendent of Mcfarland High School and our Board of Trustees, Romeo Agbalog, joined forces and Mcfarland went wall to wall dual enrollment. What does that mean? It's not invitation to attend dual enrollment, but it know, as both Naomi Castro and Linda Collins mentioned, it was a default option for every 9th grader moving from that 8th grade to the 9th grade. So Assembly Member Holden asked the question, what are we doing in the 8th grade?

And it's really critical that right from the 8th grade, as students are moving into the 9th grade, that we're engaging their families about that default option. In the 9th grade, they get at least one college credit. Now, the Legislature and the Governor have set a floor that every student who completes high school should get at least 12 college credits. And the question is, how do we go to work together to make that happen and develop the systems?

And I would say we should start right in the 9th grade. That student getting that first college class moving to the next. And my last slide, in the slide deck, here are the statewide dual enrollment numbers. Now when you look at the first set of bar graphs, you're seeing the 9th grade to the twelveth grade, and you will notice that the white space is the opportunity that we haven't yet tapped into, even though the legislation was passed eight years ago.

So in the 9th grade, we have over 90% of our students not participating in dual enrollment. And when we move to the twelveTH grade, we have over 80% that could benefit from dual enrollment classes. Am I committed to this work? Heck yes. Okay, we're moving full throttle, and I'm so pleased that Chair Fong has placed this as a priority. We've got much work to do. And the three pieces I want to highlight as I wrap up my presentation.

Number one, how can we make this a default option? We had 436,008th graders this summer that enrolled in 9th grade and started 9th grade this fall. California would continue its leadership in the state if all of that 436, all of those students had a course. Now we're not only talking about transfer pathways. Transfer pathways. Fantastic. We've got to move towards the baccalaureate detainment CTE pathways. Fantastic. We talked about two. Holden asked the question, what about apprenticeship?

They might be high school students who have more of an affinity to do on the job training work with their hands. Does that mean that they don't get college credit? And the answer is no. It's a both. And we have a major initiative in Vision 2030 called the Apprenticeship Pathways Demonstration Project. So bear with me for just a moment. Apprenticeship is a gold standard where learning happens. It happens through paid internships and the curriculum is rigorous.

The question is, why don't we apply college credit or offer college credit for the learning that happens within apprenticeship programs? So in the Apprenticeship Pathways Demonstration Project, which we are taking to dual enrollment would become the third possibility when we are talking about youth apprenticeships. So through the Apprenticeship pathways, students can be initiating and accumulating college credit. It's a both and it doesn't need to be an either or. So that is a new piece of work that we are introducing into our dual enrollment portfolio. Transfer?

Yes. Career education? Yes. Now, apprenticeship also towards a baccalaureate. So a baccalaureate attainment doesn't need to be only for those in a transfer pathway because those apprentices, when they are working in their construction trades, there might be a point in time. Imagine that they are 20 years old and 28 years old and they want to get away from a back breaking work.

Then if they have accumulated college credits towards an associate's degree, then now we can move them towards a baccalaureate degree to get maybe a management position. So dual enrollment is the equity solution to baccalaureate attainment, and it is the equity solution to economic mobility for all Californians. And we must move with urgency. Our tagline in vision. 2030 is our time is now. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Chancellor. Thank you for your leadership and efforts around dual enrollment and for your tour across California around dual enrollment programs. And when we had that program at East Delhi College as well, that was tremendous work and bringing all the different partners from across the region. So thank you for everything you're doing to uplift dual enrollment and with urgency of now. So thank you. And now I'd like to welcome Pete Collis from the California Department of Education. Welcome.

Thank you. Here on behalf of Superintendent Tony Thurmond. And we need to meet and make some progress with our dual enrollment programs and really look at what we're doing together. You talked about apprenticeships. We're trying to grow youth apprenticeships at high schools now as it is, and looking at dual enrollment where we've been in the last few years.

We had a meeting last week and we called it the Wild, Wild West of California just because of we haven't had a solid structure in place to be able to support dual enrollment from K 12 through the community colleges, through to the universities. And schools are creating their own programs right now.

So what we really need is a framework to provide that guidance and structure for at least our K 12 system and having that quality dual enrollment or early college high schools and middle college high schools. Currently in my division, I have 90 staff that run 58 different programs for the state, including CTE Community Schools, a number of others. I have a 0.2 position for dual enrollment right now. So 20% of one position is supporting dual enrollment for 1300 high schools across the state.

So capacity wise, we need to work towards that. We need that structure in place to provide that support and provide that technical assistance for our high schools. Member Holden mentioned the $200 million that we received last year in our budget for dual enrollment in early college and middle college high schools. So we were able to secure a private grant for $250,000 from College Futures Foundation.

And working with the College Ladders Project, we've been able to develop some infrastructure to provide that technical assistance that our high schools need. But That's not ongoing, right? We had 632 grantees for the dual enrollment funding from the last year, and being able to provide that ongoing technical assistance in that capacity is what we need to look forward to. Of the $200 million that we received, 537 schools were funded to establish or expand college and career access pathways.

Of that, we had 95 schools to establish new or expand middle college high schools or early college high schools across the state. So of the 200 million, we put out about $77 million. We're going to have a round two this year, hoping to get out the rest of the funding and grow these programs. But again, it's going to come down to what kind of technical assistance that we can provide to our high schools and to those programs.

My staff has been very creative over the last couple of years. They did come up with. We call it the dual Enrollment Ward Exemplary Dual Enrollment Award Program. And we had 70 applicants. Nine schools were awarded the Dual Enrollment Exemplary Award, and they are schools that provide that technical assistance to the other schools that are out there that are applying for this funding.

So That's the way we provide our technical assistance is using our schools that have already been funded and the great programs that they've put together. But going forward, another $125,000,000 going out, we need to figure out how we're going to be able to support it.

Partnering with the community colleges and we've actually since I've been the division Director for the Career College Transition Division last two and a half years, we've actually been able to build our relationship with the community college and make it stronger through some of our CTE programs, along with the dual enrollment office that is in the Chancellor's office. So That's where we are with K 12. We did describe it as the Wild West, but we really want to make this work.

And going back to age myself a lot, but 1979, I had a dual enrollment course when I was in high school. And as a high school principal for 15 years, I supported dual enrollment programs for all of my students, not just the ones that were the upper tier, but I had students that would come to me and ask me if they could take a class at the local community college, and I supported them in doing so. Thank you.

Thank you so much to both of our panelists for your leadership and efforts around dual enrollment and really looking how we expand this across the State of California. Samuel Ortega any questions or comments? Thank you so much. But really, the work that you guys are doing is so tremendous, and the first question ahead is to our Chancellor. Dr. Christian, thank you for your leadership and efforts and really the drive to bolster dual enrollment participation across our state.

One of your first podcasts was when you became Chancellor was talking about this very program to really have all freshmen do participate in dual enrollment. So ensuring that students are taking college courses that align with A to G requirements that will count towards the degree attainment is critical to increasing participation.

And we know that given the complexity of transfer agreements between our community colleges and their four year counterparts, how can community colleges help high school students understand what courses are transferable and that will count towards their four year degree? And is this something that CCGI could help articulate to our high school.

Whole? You know, I mentioned the 9th grade to Baccalaureate Detainment, which is exactly what you're talking about, chair Fong with dual enrollment and transfer, talking about that entire continuum. So from the Chancellor's office, one of the things we are doing is this major league in the field engagement. So we have folks within the office partnering with colleges in hosting dual enrollment events, where we're inviting folks from the high school counselors, principal, superintendents with our college faculty and having very focused, real conversations.

So not just theoretical ideas, but we're really operationalizing what does it look like if we want to have a course right in the 9th grade, what is that Intro to College class? What are the pathways? So deconstructing the high school scheduling pattern to introduce those possibilities. So I would say it's a very detailed, oriented, dynamic, active approach that we are taking. The second is really asking questions of where the systems are not working.

And Vice Chancellor David O'Brien and I kind of chuckled when CCC Apply came up as something That's not working from our community college leadership, Mark Sanchez and from Merced. And we are changing CCC apply and That's just one example of the multiple systems that we are moving fast to try to change using technology and other tools. The last bucket of work that we're undertaking. And this is why super excited when David told me, Chair Fong, that you were holding this hearing.

I rearranged my schedule to be here because it's going to be changes in our Title Five regulations that our Board of Governors work with and also other regulations that the Legislature oversees. We're working actively with our partners. I'm happy PPIC is here, wheelhouse is here and career ladders. So we are going to bring a robust set of changes and working with your leadership and your staff, I mean, the time is just perfect for us to see those numbers and the outcomes really making a difference. So we are totally ready to engage with you on this work.

Thank you so much, Chancellor, for that comments and remarks. And I think as many of the presenters have stated and my colleagues as well, it's getting that information out there. And I was just very proud recently that Pasadena City College recently hosted a dual enrollment workshop at our first annual College and Career Fair. I'm thankful to my team for organizing at a Temple City High school.

And it's getting information out there, whether it's Pasadena City College or any of our 116 community colleges in California, to really work with their partner, K 12 districts and to really expand those opportunities. So it's so great to hear. So thank you. And one final question to both of our panelists. Both of you mentioned ideas already, but how can the Legislature be a better partner in helping increase dual enrollment participation?

I'll go really, for us it's about capacity. And with my office and being able to build that capacity to support the field and support all our K 12 systems, 1300 high schools, That's just comprehensive high schools. We have another thousand charter schools across the state that need to have that support also. So when we're looking at that, we're over 2000 schools that would need that kind of support.

Whether it's within Cde or if it's outside of Cde, with the county offices of Education providing that technical assistance for dual enrollment, we have to be able to build that capacity and moving forward. And it's got to be ongoing.

Thank you.

I would say three things. I'll start with capacity. As Pete had mentioned, our colleges, I mean, colleges are just absolutely fantastic. It's amazing how they do a lot with little. And I know several chancellors. I hear Chancellor Carol Goldsmith all super supportive of dual enrollment, so that would be so helpful. The second is related to data systems, and several of the panelists mentioned it.

We are hard at work on the cradle to career, and internally, within the community colleges, we're also figuring out a way in which we can share data in a common data cloud, and we can get those e transcripts so we can get the data to flow to our CSU's. And in fact, we have a demonstration project in the Central Valley really looking at dual enrollment to transfer with the three CSU's, UC, Merced, and the 11 community colleges.

And the last one would be Policy Reform, where we will partner with you and get any help you can provide us with coming up with recommendations. So thank you so much for having this hearing.

Thank you so much. Chancellor Christian, thank you so much. Mr. Collins. Really appreciate both of your leadership and efforts and really looking at how we expand dual enrollment programs in California and to really make sure that our students have the opportunities to succeed. So thank you guys so much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now we will move on to our public comment period, item number six. I would now like to invite Members of the public to speak. Each speaker will have no more than two minutes to provide comments. If anybody like to speak, please come on up. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chairman Fong. My name is Carol Goldsmith, and I'm the chancellor of the colleges in the Central Valley, which include Reedley College, Clovis College, California's first community college at Fresno City College, and California's newest community college at Madeira. I just wanted to share a little bit of data to talk about the power of and the transformational power about dual enrollment. Currently, this fall, our four colleges have served over 4600 dual enrollment students.

And when you look at the breakout of that, about 55% are female, 43% are male, and then 2% non binary. And when you start thinking about dual enrollment, a lot of times people want to talk about their success. Their success is phenomenal, and part of it's because of the wonderful, not only the instruction that they get, but the wraparound support that they're receiving. If you look at our average student that is college age and going to college, our success rate is about 75%.

When looking at our dual enrollment students, 91%. So those 91% students are completing their courses with the Sierra Better. And one of the things that I was touched about the data in the Central Valley, this is the equity strategy. This is changing the game. When we look at who our students are. Last year, we served over 10,000 dual enrollment students. And when you look at the ethnicity of our students, we know that the Hispanic population is our largest population in our Valley.

And if you look at who our students are, 67% of our students are Hispanic. Coming from first generation is about 55%. We know our students are completing at higher rates in terms of their own graduation rates, with Fresno Unified, Clovis Unified, Dynauba, Madeira, all of them. We serve both urban schools and rural schools, and we're seeing this change and transform those young lives and going on to college. So any work that we can do in the Central Valley, we're ready to help.

We believe strongly in Sonia Christensen and her vision. And I just want to say thank you for everything you've done legislatively and everything you're going to do legislatively to help this work move forward. So thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Fong and Members of the Assembly Higher Education Committee. My name is Melissa Bardo, associate Director of policy and government relations for the Education Trust, West. We'd like to thank the Committee for hosting this important hearing and working to improve access to dual enrollment for underrepresented students. As you've heard today, dual enrollment has the potential to be a powerful lever for equity and student attainment of postsecondary education.

And education leaders have an opportunity to reimagine how strategies like dual enrollment can transform our systems and students'lives. Consistent with the findings from the research panel, our own research has found that LEAs and community colleges are not yet equitably serving Black, Native, and Latinx students through dual enrollment, although much improvement is happening. Therefore, strategies to increase dual enrollment access and participation must center the needs of these students and families. Last year, we saw a historic 200 $1.0 million investment in dual enrollment expansion.

But more work remains to ensure dual enrollment and CCAP partnerships, specifically are equitably serving underrepresented students. As we monitor implementation of this onetime investment, we urge the Legislature to hold districts accountable for expanding access to underrepresented students and ensuring that dual enrollment pathways accelerate student achievement of college credentials and degrees.

And further as the state looks towards further opportunities for expansion and investment, we urge the Legislature to consider the following strategies to increase teacher and faculty pipelines, professional development and technical assistance to ensure LEAs and districts have the resources they need to develop or expand dual enrollment partnerships, outreach and awareness building for students and families, and finally, alignment with equity centered reforms, including AB 705. Thank you again for the robust discussion and we look forward to being partners in this work.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Fong. My name is Peter Birdsall. Excuse me. Representing the California High School Coalition. It's a coalition of about 55 school districts around the state that came together for concerns at high schools. We are. Very strongly supportive of dual enrollment generally and the CCAP program in particular. We did ask our membership what is the primary barrier to moving the agenda more rapidly?

And there is a specific section of the education code That's creating a lot of frustration, which is if a high school wants to implement dual enrollment programs and has a willing community college partner to do that, they can't enter into that agreement without the approval of the community college district in whose service area their high school is located. So this is impacting career technical education programs, core academic programs where high schools are ready to move forward. As been indicated before, it's uneven across the state.

So this is a problem identified by placer by Santa Maria, which is known as Santa Barbara County. Tilleri identified this problem. Fullerton it's a statewide issue of programs that can be moved forward that are not occurring because timeliness problems.

I don't know if it's lack of interest or whatever, but the inability to enter into an agreement pursuant to all the requirements, the CCAP program and compliance with all the requirements, CCAP, but you can't get the approval of the community college district in which the high school is located. So if we had some flexibility on that, I think you would see much more even distribution across the state by people right now that I think the term earlier was gatekeepers. We could move past that gate. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Any other Members of the public like to provide any comments? All right, thank you so much to everyone for really a thoughtful, robust conversation and recommendations. Thank you so much to all our panelists for being here, for making a trip and really providing a lot of thoughtful updates and comments and really providing solid recommendations going forward. And I'm really encouraged by all the information shared today by our practitioners who are doing the hard work each and every day on the ground.

And we know that there's a number of challenges, but there's a lot of opportunities around dual enrollment, expanding dual enrollment opportunities here in California and how the Legislature can partner with high schools and community colleges to increase equitable access to dual enrollment programs across our great State of California. I'm so grateful to my colleagues for joining us here today.

Thank you so much to Assembly Ortega for joining us, and also to somewhere Chris Holden as well, who's been a champion of dual enrollment programs throughout his entire legislative career. And thank you so much to all my colleagues for everything we'll be doing going forward, working around dual enrollment programs and legislation. And I'm so grateful to all of you for joining us here today. Everyone online, in person for being here today for this very important conversation.

And thank you so much to Ellen for really her leadership and efforts around this hearing today. And to Janice and to Kevin, to Lindsay, to Kirsten, and to the entire team and so grateful for all their hard work and efforts. And thank you so much to all of you again for everything you do each and every day. For our higher education system, for our community college students, for our high school students up and down the state. And with that, we are Adjourned.