Creating Productive Relationships Between K-12 Schools and Higher Education

Early college and dual enrollment programs are hybrid institutions, with characteristics of both characteristics of K-12 and higher education organizations. Visionary leadership is important for creating these institutions, and they require support of both the highest officials at each institution, as well as the operational levels below them. Dual enrollment programs, particularly concurrent enrollment programs, were developed to meet the needs of universities in the 1940s to help meet enrollment challenges and have since developed into statewide efforts to increase college going and college success. More recently, higher education and dual enrollment programs have leveraged these efforts to improve teacher capacity and increase the equity of these programs for low-income students. To create sustainable programs, leaders need to think carefully about their legal and informal relationships, creating memoranda of understanding, steering committees and planning ceremonies that honor the students who graduate from these institutions.