WASHNIGTON, D.C. -- Dual enrollment programs lead to higher GPAs for low-income, low-achieving male students and higher rates of full-time college enrollment overall, but more research is needed to develop a stronger link between the programs and post-secondary success.

Those were among the major points made Friday during an American Youth Policy Forum titled “Dual Enrollment: A Strategy for Improving College Readiness and Success for All Students.”

The policy group’s focus on dual enrollment comes just as the U.S. Department of Education granted No Child Left Behind waivers to several states that incorporated dual enrollment plans into the state education plans they developed in exchange for the flexibility.

“We think it’s important that students are taking rigorous and challenging coursework at the high school level to prepare them for college,” panelist Chad Aldeman, Policy Advisor in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education, said in reference to the three NCLB waiver-granted states—Florida, New Mexico and Indiana—that incorporated dual enrollment strategies into their education plans.

Dual enrollment programs are programs in which high school students are simultaneously or “dually” enrolled in both high school and credit-bearing college courses that may be taught in the high school or at a college campus.

The programs have grown in prominence over the last decade and serve as many as 800,000 students per year, although the latest national data on dual enrollment’s reach are from the 2002-2003 school year, according to a February “research overview” produced by the Community College Resource Center and distributed to the 100 or so people who attended Friday’s policy discussion.

Panelist Katherine Hughes, Assistant Director of Work and Education Reform Research at CCRC and the Institute on Education and the Economy, or IEE, said research on the effectiveness of dual enrollment programs is still emerging.