Noa Lininger was a freshman at Lafayette’s Centaurus High at the end of the pandemic and decided a traditional high school experience wasn’t for them.

After trying various options, Noa created a senior year schedule that combines an in-person, concurrent enrollment videography class at the Boulder Technical Education Center with online Front Range Community College classes.

Concurrent enrollment allows high school students to earn college credit while in high school, with the college tuition paid for by the state. Because of concurrent enrollment programs, Noa expects to graduate from high school in May with 22 college credits at no cost and plans to continue their education.

“Concurrent enrollment classes helped me see my options,” said Lininger, who goes by they/their pronouns.

Statewide, as originally reported by Chalkbeat Colorado, high school students account for almost half of the state’s community college enrollment, thanks to concurrent enrollment. Of the 88,118 students enrolled at the two-year level, more than 39,000 students statewide are still in high school, the Colorado Community College System reports.

In total, high school students accounted for almost 90% of enrollment increases at the community college level this year. Since the pandemic, high school students have become a main driver of community college enrollment in the state.

Front Range Community College is the largest provider of concurrent enrollment in Colorado. The college serves about 13,000 dual-enrolled students and has contracts with 65 partners. FRCC serves students at more than 120 sites, including 55 high schools. FRCC has campuses in Longmont, Westminster and Fort Collins.

“The need for concurrent enrollment, the popularity and the access have just skyrocketed,” said Courtney Graeff, FRCC’s director of concurrent enrollment at the Longmont campus. “We’re constantly having to find new ways of keeping up with the numbers because the popularity has increased exponentially.”

For Noa, college classes are different enough from high school courses that they can now see themselves continuing their education. They feel the classes are more interesting and “structured better for how my brain works.”

Noa’s plans include earning a professional esthetician license at Boulder TEC before graduation, potentially trying video editing as a side gig and applying to the ASCENT program. ASCENT, or Accelerating Students through Concurrent Enrollment, allows students who completed at least nine college credits to stay in high school for a fifth year while they take free college classes.

“It’s a huge opportunity for students to continue their education at Front Range,” Graeff said.

Along with Front Range, colleges that participate in ASCENT include Metropolitan State University Denver, University of Northern Colorado, Aims Community College, Emily Griffith Technical College, Western Colorado University and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

FRCC has seen consistent, steady growth in all concurrent enrollment classes college-wide since 2009. At the Boulder County campus in Longmont, concurrent enrollment students comprised 53% of the 5,506 total students in the 2023-2024 academic year. The year before, those students made up 46% of the total population and 32% the year before that.

In both the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts, officials say student demand for concurrent enrollment classes has increased exponentially in recent years. Most of those classes are taught on high school campuses by high school teachers certified to teach at the college level. Taking college classes online is another popular option. Only a small percentage of students attend classes on a college campus.

Along with FRCC, Boulder Valley has concurrent enrollment agreements with the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Denver and Metro State University. For the fall semester, 1,603 Boulder Valley students were earning college credits. Of those, about 100 were taking classes at a college, either in-person or online. The rest, about 1,500 students, took concurrent enrollment classes at their high school or at Boulder TEC.

Getting more students into concurrent enrollment classes is part of the school district’s Grad Plus initiative, which encourages all students to graduate with more than a diploma. Other options include work-based learning and industry certificates.

“We’re all about helping students get ahead in their education,” said Madeline Brockish, Boulder Valley’s Career and College Connections coordinator. “Concurrent enrollment is really about making college more affordable to students and saving them time.”

St. Vrain Valley officials said the district enrolled a record number of students in concurrent enrollment classes in the fall. To meet the demand and help students navigate their options, each of its high schools now has a counselor who oversees the program.

The district has concurrent enrollment agreements with six colleges: FRCC, Red Rocks Community College, Aims Community College, University of Colorado Denver, Colorado State University Online and Metro State University. First semester, 1,733 students took 91 concurrent enrollment classes. Sixty of those were taught in St. Vrain Valley classrooms, while the other 31 were held online or at a college campus.

St. Vrain Valley Assistant Superintendent Kahle Charles said concurrent enrollment classes give students a competitive advantage going into college or the workforce, while earning credits can make coursework feel more relevant.

“It’s opening opportunities for our students,” he said. “We really appreciate these relationships we have with these higher education institutions. They’re really seeing the value of working with school districts.”

At FRCC, concurrent enrollment students have access to all the same support services as the college’s traditional students, including library databases, tutoring, writing and math support centers. Graeff said those opportunities are life-changing, especially for students of color, first-generation students and students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

“The student debt crisis has really pushed forward the opportunities for concurrent enrollment students,” Graeff said. “They’re starting to see the importance of engaging in college work earlier so that they can be more successful upon high school graduation, whether they’re continuing their education or entering the workforce.”

As student interest grows, one challenge for school districts has been getting teachers certified to teach college classes. The qualifications can vary by college and subject, but colleges generally require either a master’s degree in the subject area being taught or a master’s degree plus 18 subject credit hours.

If there’s not a high school teacher with those qualifications, the community college may send an instructor to teach the class on the high school campus. Centaurus High, for example, brought in a Front Range instructor this semester to teach three classes in Spanish to students who needed the higher-level coursework.

Another Front Range class offered at Centaurus is English composition class. For that class, which is in its third year, the school has three qualified teachers. One of those is Jennifer Dunbar, who has a master’s degree in English literature, taught English at a community college in Washington and, after taking time off to raise her kids, went back to school for a teaching license and master’s in education.

She said Front Range provides high school teachers with professional development, a mentor/class observer and support for registration issues. Front Range also provides a syllabus and online textbook but allows teachers to tailor the class based on their strengths. She added that combining higher education with K-12 required resolving some conflicts, including around special education accommodations. Accommodations are more limited at the college level.

Along with the on-campus support Front Range offers to students, Impact on Education is covering the cost of after-school tutoring at Centaurus for concurrent enrollment students.

“For kids who are underwater, it’s hard to get back,” Dunbar said. “We’ve caught a lot of students with this tutoring who might have failed.”

Dunbar said many of the students taking the class are in the Centaurus engineering program and want to get their college English requirements out of the way. Others want the experience of a college class.

“I can prepare myself for when I go to college and be able to say I took a college class,” said senior Lizbeth Aguirre. “I took it as a challenge.”

Classmate Logan Cole, also a senior, said he likes concurrent enrollment because, unlike in an AP class, a good grade guarantees college credit. In AP, receiving college credit requires a high enough score on the end-of-year AP test — and even then, colleges decide what scores and what subjects they’ll accept for credit.

“Concurrent enrollment classes are a good taste of what a college class will be,” he said.

Along with adding college classes at their high schools, both local districts are increasing opportunities to earn college credits in their career and technical education classes. To teach career and technical education classes for college credit, instructors typically need an associate’s degree or higher plus a specified number of hours of industry experience.

Kate Topham, the counselor at St. Vrain Valley’s Career Elevation and Technology Center, said the center offers 50 classes with the opportunity to earn college credit through five college partners, up from two college partners in 2019. She talks up the advantages, helps students register with the colleges and troubleshoots with students if there are problems. Of the students eligible to earn college credit, she said, 83% signed up this fall.

“I tell students they’re not opting into a harder class,” she said. “Instead, it’s about where those credits can take you in the future. You can add it to a resume or get ahead in college. The impact is amazing.”

Emma Grassman, a senior at Erie High School taking a Certified Nursing Assistant class, said she’s learning skills like CPR that will be useful no matter where she ends up after high school. Plus, she said, the credit through Red Rocks Community College should help her stand out on college applications.

“You’re showing them that you’re ready to go to college,” she said.

Erik Hakanson, a Longmont High student taking manufacturing classes, said he’s on track to earn 12 credits in Metro State’s engineering program.

Taking the classes at the Career Elevation and Technology Center, he said, saves money on college tuition, lets him learn from a supportive teacher who worked in the industry and gives him more time in the machine shop than he would likely get in college.

“This gives you a hands-on experience,” he said.

At Boulder’s Technical Education Center, Ash Collins is teaching a concurrent enrollment videography class. She started the center’s videography program four years ago,

retrofitting a classroom into a studio by adding a sound booth and other equipment. Two years ago, she got certified to teach at the college level and partnered with Front Range, allowing her students to earn 12 college credits.

“My expectations are high,” she said. “I need to be able to trust them to take ownership of what they’re learning. They get to decide what they want to create. Students really do get that college-level curriculum here. They should get credit for it.”

She said the rigor and content are the same as a videography class taught at the college level, but she gives them more direct support. In college, she said, a student might be given a project that’s due in three months and be expected to complete it on their own. She provides more structure and breaks down the steps.

“There’s a lot more checking in, but they’re capable of a lot,” she said.

Along with a large roster of concurrent enrollment classes, St. Vrain offers the early college P-TECH, or Pathways in Technology Early College High School, program. The extended year program gives high school students up to six years to earn an associate’s degree along with their high diploma, with a goal of getting underrepresented students into STEM fields after graduation. State funding covers the community college tuition costs.

St. Vrain has expanded the program since first offering it at Skyline High in 2016 to four high schools. Altogether, 444 St. Vrain students are enrolled in P-TECH classes this school year, with students generally going to the community college campus for classes starting in their junior and senior years.

Each high school has a different focus, community college partners and business partners. Front Range partners with the P-TECH programs at the three Longmont schools, Skyline High, Silver Creek and Longmont High.

“They always tell me, ‘Miss, I never thought I’d go to college,’”Graeff said. “And the day that they graduate I get to watch them walk across the stage and get that college degree before they even graduate high school.”

April Menzies, FRCC’s associate vice president for K-12 partnerships, said the college about five years ago was seeing double-digit percentage increases in concurrently enrolled students year-over-year. Now increases aren’t so high, but enrollment is still going up.

“What the data really shows, both in the state data reports and nationwide, is students tend to start taking college classes in high school and they tend to go to college at a greater rate than students that don’t have that opportunity or don’t take college classes in high school,” Menzies said.

Roughly a third of FRCC’s concurrent enrollment students return to the college for further education at some point after high school. Many others often continue to a four-year college or university.

Menzies said concurrent enrollment can create financial savings for families and allow students to explore career opportunities and topics not available in the high school curriculum.

She said there’s also value in learning how college works, helping students transition to college with more ease.

“There are lots of reasons why students take a concurrent enrollment class, and the nice thing is it serves a lot of needs,” Menzies said. “It meets a lot of different goals for students and families.”

Colorado lawmakers say they recognize the value of dual enrollment, especially because national research shows these programs can help eliminate gaps in who gets to college. But they also want more information on the long-term benefit of the programs, as well as the overall costs to the state.

A state task force has called for streamlining what it has described as a fragmented early career and college system built over many years. Colorado has numerous programs, but not every district offers every program. Each program has different reporting requirements, making it hard to measure how programs are working individually and as a whole.

Colorado lawmakers enacted legislation this year that: Directs the state to perform a comprehensive financial study to analyze how much the programs cost the state and districts; Compiles long-term data on program outcomes; Expands college opportunities for high school students; and Seeks to find a comprehensive direction on college and career education.

The financial study, by Denver-based Slalom Consulting, was published in December and includes recommendations to consolidate state grants and incentives into a single funding source, standardize concurrent enrollment tuition agreements, adopt a tuition reimbursement model for extended-year programs like ASCENT and P-TECH, and reassess the ASCENT program.

ASCENT, according to the report, should be realigned to ensure it’s focused on the original intent of serving low-income, at-risk students. A lack of clear workforce goals and rising costs are other concerns lawmakers have raised about ASCENT. Unlike P-TECH, ASCENT doesn’t require students to choose a particular major or area of study.

From the school district perspective, St. Vrain’s Charles said, a common tuition agreement and streamlining teacher qualifications would both be helpful, especially for rural school districts that don’t have the same resources as a larger district like St. Vrain.

“Statewide, it can be a better system for all of us,” he said.

Chalkbeat Colorado contributed to this report.