Opinion: Dual Enrollment Is a School Choice Option People Don’t Talk About — but Should

National School Choice Week typically highlights the options available to families when selecting a school, including district, charter, private and homeschool. But there’s another form of choice that rarely gets the spotlight.

It’s a choice about what you study, who teaches it and how fast you can move from high school to a credential and a career. That hidden-in-plain-sight choice is dual enrollment — high school students taking college courses for credit.

National School Choice Week is an opportunity to point out that dual enrollment is one of the largest and fastest-growing forms of public school choice in America. It’s a school choice growth story that no one’s talking about.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently reported a modest increase in college undergraduate enrollment in fall 2025 — about 1%, driven by a 3% increase in community college enrollment. Buried inside those headlines is a key driver of that community college growth.

More high school students are enrolling in college courses through dual enrollment. The total increased 5.9% (about 66,000 additional students) last fall, reaching 1.19 million. That represents nearly 1 in 5 community college students. That is not a boutique program. That is a system.

Look beyond community colleges, and the picture is even bigger. A Community College Research Center analysis shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, there were 2.8 million dual enrollment students nationwide, a 12.7% increase over the prior year (about 300,000 additional students).

That analysis also reports that community colleges serve about 71% of all dual-enrolled students. And in some states — for example, Idaho and Indiana — high schoolers make up more than half of community college enrollments.

School choice is often treated as an exit strategy: You leave your assigned school for another academic option. Dual enrollment works differently. It expands opportunity inside public education, often without requiring a family to move, win a lottery or navigate a complex school choice marketplace.

In other words, dual enrollment is school choice by another name: course choice at scale. It gives students the power to choose advanced academic coursework, career and technical courses or early college classes, sometimes taught at a college, sometimes at a high school campus and increasingly online. For many young people, the last years of high school effectively become the first year of college.

Dual enrollment functions like school choice in at least four practical ways:

• It lets young people choose courses and pathways, not just buildings. A student can opt into college algebra, emergency medical tech coursework, welding or introductory psychology while still anchored in a familiar school community.
  
• It expands opportunity in rural and small districts. Where there may be only one high school, dual enrollment, especially through hybrid or online delivery, can dramatically widen access to advanced courses.
  
• It creates choice across K-12, higher education and the workforce. The best models link course sequences to degrees, certificates and regional labor market demand.
  
• It is scalable and public. Dual enrollment often leverages institutions that already exist, especially community colleges, making it one of the fastest ways to expand opportunity without building a new system from scratch.

Done well, dual enrollment gives students a first taste of college-level expectations, lowers the cost of a credential and accelerates the path to a good first job. It is one of the few interventions that can reduce both the time and price of postsecondary attainment while building confidence — especially for first-generation students who benefit from early proof that they are capable of college.

Dual enrollment students are more likely to finish high school, enter postsecondary education and complete college degrees than their non-dual-enrolled peers. And participation is associated with better college outcomes for Black and Hispanic students.

But averages conceal disparities and design flaws. Dual enrollment can devolve into what many educators quietly recognize as random acts of dual credit. This occurs when a scattering of classes doesn’t add up to a credential, credits don’t transfer cleanly, there is uneven rigor across sites and equity gaps widen instead of closing. Choice without structure can become confusing.

If phase one of dual enrollment was about scale, phase two must be about coherence that turns participation into mobility. Here are five ways that would protect choice while increasing quality and payoff.

Promote set pathways, not just random courses. Group classes into simple, step-by-step plans that end in something that counts: transferable college credit, a short credential that applies to a degree or job-linked courses in fields that are hiring.

Make credit transfers count automatically. Publish clear “this course counts as that course” lists across colleges and set statewide rules so students don’t lose credits when they move from one campus to another.

Treat advising as part of the program, not an add-on. Students need help choosing courses that fit their workload, match their goals and will still matter after graduation — otherwise, they may rack up credits that don’t help.

Protect quality and show results plainly. Set clear expectations for course rigor and instruction, then report basic data: who enrolls, who passes and whether credits actually move students toward degrees or credentials.

Build access in from the start. Remove fees, ensure access to transportation and the internet, recruit students who are often left out and provide tutoring — so dual enrollment narrows gaps instead of widening them.

Dual enrollment doesn’t fit neatly into the usual school choice categories. It isn’t a charter school or a different district school. It isn’t an education savings account for a private school. It isn’t homeschooling.

It is a public, cross-institutional strategy that expands options without requiring students to abandon their schools. That’s exactly why it deserves a bigger place in the National School Choice Week story.

School choice is ultimately about giving young people more ways to build a future that fits them. One of the most powerful forms of choice today may be the one that simply lets students begin college — intentionally, coherently and with support — while they’re still in high school.