Impacts of Concurrent Enrollment Offerings on Minnesota High School Programming: A Qualitative Exploration of High School Administrator Perceptions.

Concurrent enrollment plays an increasingly important role in dual credit program options throughout Minnesota public schools. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to discern any shared phenomenon among public high school administrators in schools where concurrent enrollment is offered. This dissertation was framed by two research questions: 1) Share your rationale for why your school is offering concurrent enrollment courses. 2) From your perspective, how does concurrent enrollment participation impact your student body? A qualitative, constructivist, phenomenological study was conducted using semi-structured interviews across a mix of seven rural and urban Minnesota school districts. The participants included seven administrators with job titles ranging from Counselor to District Superintendent. The study’s theoretical framework was grounded in Perna & Thomas’ Integrated Conceptual Model of Student Success (2008), which incorporates schools as a component of the framework’s integral contextual layers through which students integrate and navigate. This model assists in providing a visual framework of the ingredients necessary for student success during and after, high school (Taylor, 2015). The findings yielded that participants perceived: a) concurrent enrollment provides students with access and opportunity to college-level rigorous coursework and that exposure of that level of rigorous coursework better prepares a student for success after high school, regardless if college credit is earned while taking the course, b) that offering concurrent enrollment was necessary to the financial viability of the school, and c) there is a direct impact on accreditation and staffing resources when offering concurrent enrollment