DUAL ENROLLMENT IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Dual enrollment (DE) programs allow high school students to take college courses for high school and college credit, which in political science are introductory American government courses. Dual enrollment is a blanket term that includes early college high schools, college courses taught at high schools, high school students who come to college campuses to take courses, as well as offerings both in online and in-person teaching modalities. The rapid expansion of these programs impacts not only political science educators who teach DE courses, but also departmental undergraduate enrollments, as well as the ongoing debates on civic learning and education in the United States.

From the US Department of Education’s latest reported data, in 2023-2024 about 2.8 million high school students enrolled in DE courses, which marked an increase of 12.7% over the previous 2022-2023 academic year (Fink, 2025). While DE represents an increasing proportion of community college enrollment, DE is growing across all post-secondary institutions in the United States, with mounting enrollment and funding crunches across higher education. In addition, four-year institutions are now facing a substantial increase of first year students with prior dual enrollment credits, which are primarily delivered through high school teachers teaching college courses at their high schools (Community College Research Center [CCRC], 2026).

While there are no nationally reported numbers of high school students taking DE courses specifically in American government, a 2019 report from National Center of Education Statistics mentions that about 31% of high school graduates take DE courses in the social sciences (CCRC, 2026). DE courses have historically been offered to junior and seniors in high school, DE enrollment can also include first and second year high school students. Teaching American government courses to high school students in general presents unique challenges because the content of the course can include mature issues and topics. Moreover, American government courses offer students their first substantive exposure to civic learning and education, which in DE programs occur much earlier than typical college age adults and from instructors who are mostly certified high school teachers, with some two and four-year college faculty.

Unlike Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate courses, which also award college credit, high schools and two-or four-year post-secondary school institutions must partner with each other to offer college credit to high school students. This partnership presents opportunities for the academic advancement of students, funding and enrollment stability for two- and four-year institutions and developing the transfer pipeline from high school to college and graduate school. Our 2026 APSA Virtual Research Meeting Working Group gathered to share our professional experiences, develop research agendas, and produce practical, ready-to-use, resources that will help political science educators meet the growing dual enrollment challenge.

UNDERSTANDING THE LANDSCAPE

Early sessions explored how dual enrollment provides instructional opportunities to move beyond traditional college credit exam preparation, like the AP US Government exam, toward developing active and informed citizens, early on in high school. Serge Danielson-Francois highlighted the importance of helping students engage meaningfully with foundational primary documents, understanding public policy and governance, and building the skills necessary for not just classroom learning but civic participation. He also emphasized the opportunity that dual enrollment courses offer to introduce high school students to political science subfields like political theory and American politics and challenging students to tackle primary documents as scholars. Erin Richards emphasized scaffolded learning approaches that encourage students to think critically, solve problems collaboratively, and understand the roles of different levels of government. She also presented her experience with 10-steps of no-blame problem solving and role-playing activities such as thinking like a civic trustee.

Another major theme throughout the VRM was the challenge of aligning high school and college systems within dual enrollment and concurrent enrollment programs. Perri Gardner presented on the interconnected administrative and management challenges particular to dual enrollment, including institutional compliance, different state and district requirements, faculty qualifications, curriculum alignment, and differences in learning outcomes between secondary and postsecondary education. She also identified and discussed administrative processes such as enrollment, grading, and learning management systems as important practical considerations for faculty and students. Jeremy Bowling presented on the variety of dual enrollment programs, which include courses that take place at high schools and those that take place at college campuses as well the variety of dual enrollment instructors and the requirements to successfully provide oversight to a wide range of dual enrollment programs. He stressed the importance of structured support systems, including common course designs, teaching observations, early interventions, and withdrawal processes to help students succeed in college-level coursework.

Meeting participants also considered the complex identity of dual enrollment students, who must navigate expectations as both high school and college learners, in particular, when these students are learning in a community college environment. Tied to the issue of complex identity, was the issue of maintaining academic rigor while improving access and student success. Ben Malone and Terry Gilmour presented on the need for dual enrollment courses to include core skill development, namely reading, writing, and speaking and the need for teaching resources that would help instructors new to dual enrollment teaching. They also included a discussion of the rapid growth of dual enrollment participation, how these impact college funding, the rationale of students and families in pushing high school students towards dual enrollment, and the importance of making dual enrollment affordable or free for students whether in-person or online course modalities.

All within the group advocated for the use of open educational resources (OER) that support and emphasize core academic skills, particularly reading, writing, and communication, which should remain central to curriculum design as well as the need for data collection and reporting on dual enrollment students and programs. Josh Franco and Parakh Hoon noted the promise of OER development for both dual enrollment students and teaching faculty and the need for a comprehensive report on dual enrollment students taking political science courses to help inform the discipline of the impact that dual enrollment will have on both two- and four-year institutions.

BUILDING POLITICAL SCIENCE PARTNERSHIPS

As collaborative resource development was a central component of the workshop, participants spent time over the two-days, working in groups to create materials that could later be shared through APSA Educate. Through these discussions, three shared priorities emerged: (1) the need for resources tailored to administrators, faculty, and students, (2) the importance of preparing students through strong reading, writing, and speaking skill development, and (3) the value of creating accessible best-practice guides and FAQs for educators and institutions.

The final session of this virtual research meeting focused on sustaining collaboration beyond the workshop. Participants shared group collaborative work progress, discussed opportunities to connect the work between groups, and explored future plans, including a dedicated space on APSA Educate, as well as participation in a panel on dual enrollment during the TLC @ APSA taking place in Boston, in September 2026. Additional conversations highlighted the growing importance of OER, as well as the need for stronger data collection and reporting systems. The workshop concluded with discussion of how APSA Educate could serve as a platform for sharing resources and supporting ongoing collaboration among participants and a wider group via TLC @ APSA and other organized activities over the next two years.

To conclude, the sessions of this virtual research meeting highlighted the need for discipline focused guidelines and understanding of burgeoning dual enrollment programs. With varied approaches that included best practices in dual enrollment program management, OER, and teaching guides and resources for faculty teaching dual enrollment courses, including practical strategies for college readiness, each participant demonstrated their expertise with the aim of addressing the challenges of teaching dual enrollment courses and managing dual enrollment programs. By building shared teaching resources and creating a starting point for continued collaboration, this group has committed to orienting political science educators and departments towards effective and successful dual enrollment courses and programs.

PARTICIPANTS

• • Co-facilitator, Dale Mineshima-Lowe - Parami University

• • Co-facilitator, Helen Chang - Eugenio María de Hostos Community College of The City University of New York

• • Jeremy Bowling, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• • Serge Danielson-Francois, Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills, MI)

• • Josh Franco, Cuyamaca College, California

• • Perri Gardner, College of Southern Idaho

• • Terry Gilmour, Midland College

• • Parakh Hoon, Southern Puget Sound Community College

• • Benjamin Malone, Midland College

• • Erin Richards, Cascadia College

WHAT IS THE STATE OF UNDERGRADUATE CIVIC REQUIREMENTS?

The research group used the opening session to investigate the state of undergraduate civic learning requirements across higher education. This took two forms. First, co-facilitators Howard Sanborn and William Schreckhise provided an update to the Working Group’s previous efforts to gather information about American civic undergraduate mandates. Second, Bennett Grubbs shared additional information from the APSA Committee on Civic Education’s 2025 survey. Together, they identify a fractured civic education landscape that is rapidly changing in ways that significantly impact political science departments.

Until recently, only nine states (California, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, Texas, and Wyoming) had state legislation requiring undergraduate students of public universities to complete civic education requirements. Other state public systems, however, such as the Oklahoma State system and the University of South Dakota system, have regental-level civic learning mandates that political science departments help their universities and colleges meet. Data from the APSA Committee on the Civic Education’s 2025 survey suggest that hundreds of public higher education institutions across the country also have some civic education mandate. Within the last few years, state policymakers in Arkansas, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Utah have joined the previous cohort to pass legislation containing either civic education requirements for undergraduates and/or the establishment of campus centers for civic learning.

The research group discussed how this rapidly changing landscape impacts political science departments. Many political science departments must now find a way to offer introductory courses on a larger scale, in multi-format types, and in many cases, without any increased budgetary support. Individual faculty and departments must also grapple with state policymakers attempting to influence course content, and in some cases, faculty must teach American government without scholarly training and expertise. The group highlighted how these mandates could also affect political science major and minor enrollments. Introductory American government courses are an important opportunity for political science educators to potentially increase department major and minors through recruitment efforts.

Given the considerable variety of mandates, resource constraints, and the vast array of institutional types across the US higher education landscape, it is clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to civic learning requirements. The APSA Working Group on American Civics Mandates instead hopes to draw knowledge from faculty and departments who have been meeting these requirements for a while, political science experts in civic education pedagogy, and its own growing professional networks.

HOW TO MEET THE MANDATES WITH RESOURCES AND ADVOCACY?

Two participants noted the effects of budget pressures on departments to provide sections for students amidst new state mandates and increasing enrollments.

Christopher Housenick noted how data can provide administrators with a clear view of the challenges that departments face in meeting student demand amidst the rollout of civics requirements. These challenges can include current faculty members being asked to teach hundreds more non-majors per semester. Data that documents the increase in faculty workload required to meet the mandate can potentially persuade administrators of the need for future faculty line requests and instructional support, larger classrooms, etc. A good chair can use data to provide insights about the effects of the mandates to administrators, including how these pressures negatively affect the institution as a whole; a savvy chair can frame the data with potential solutions.

Howard Sanborn discussed how departments can use a knowledge of college budgeting to advocate for the resources that can support instruction of the courses to meet the civics mandates. In so doing, departments should consider how colleges fund their operations. For example, many departments operate on historical budget models, in which allocations largely stay static across fiscal years. In these cases, departments will need to make necessary, but difficult, resource requests that, implicitly, call for a reallocation of funds from another unit in a college.

Alternatively, revenue-based funding structures, such as Responsibility Center Management (RCM) models, offer departments the ability to advocate for a percentage of a college’s fee revenue–funds generated by student credit hours (SCH) produced through enrollments in these courses. These revenues, if part of a programmatic strategy to embrace the requirements of the mandate, can provide resources for teaching faculty, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate learning assistants who can directly support the very students funding these instructors.

As Housenick and Sanborn each noted, data-driven arguments can serve to bolster departments in the eyes of administrators. The strategic connection of enrollment to budget may help chairs and heads more clearly advocate to administrators the importance of, and pressures on, political science faculty members in addressing the mandate-driven surge in students. They can also help to buttress graduate programs that are facing funding pressures; forward-thinking departments should strategically position graduate students as a key component of a college’s effort to offer students an engaged civics experience through the use of active learning pedagogies. And, enrollment and faculty headcount data can provide administrators the evidence they need to argue for civic engagement with external stakeholders, such as accreditors.

HOW TO MEET THE MANDATES WITH CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY?

A number of participants discussed efforts to provide resources in creative, scalable ways to ensure a quality civics education amidst limited resources. For example, they noted how mandates could be met using a variety of modalities, including face-to-face and online options. In addition, participants acknowledged the pressures on faculty members leading courses that, through the mandates, already run the risk of political politicization. Finally, they considered how APSA can provide resources to instructors across the discipline to better position departments to meet the mandates as effectively as possible.

The growing number of American civics mandates create a need for classroom materials, learning resources, and student assessments. This new demand creates opportunities for traditional legacy publishers, but also for low and zero-cost educational resources. Julia Marin Hellwege and William O’Brochta collaborated with OpenStax to develop an American government activity workbook to help fill the space for high-quality, low and zero-cost educational resources. During the presentation, Marin Hellwege shared how she and O’Brochta developed over fifty active learning activities connected to core American government curriculum and concepts. Using this workbook, political science educators will be able to access and implement active civic simulations and games, assignments, and assessments. After her presentation, the group discussed how APSA can better showcase these materials to other political scientists, as well as the need for political science educators to receive more formal training in creating open education resources.

Whereas Marin Hellwege shared teaching and learning materials designed to help undergraduates learn and understand core components of American government and its political culture, Judithanne McLauchlan shared how, on her campus, she leads a center that helps prepare undergraduates for active citizenship via the Civic Project. Her presentation focused on the implementation of the Civics Project within the University of South Florida’s Center for Civic Engagement, its connection to Florida’s specific mandates, as well as the learning outcomes her students experienced when completing The Civics Project mandate. Her presentation offers political science instructors a ready-made model that can be used to incorporate experiential learning and practical democratic education into practice at other institutions.

Finally, Annabelle Conroy and Christopher Spinale presented a detailed analysis and reflection on the process the University of Central Florida went through to redesign their American government courses to ensure they meet the state of Florida’s new civic learning and education mandates. Florida’s recent new civic mandates’ required outcome is a high knowledge level within an undergraduate population that comes into the classroom largely lacking civic efficacy. Conroy and Spinale sought to redesign their department’s American government courses in a way that would help ensure students can learn the course material, meet state mandate requirements, could be implemented both at scale and by different faculty, and yet still serve the political science department’s needs. Their presentation traced the practical tradeoffs that were necessary to ensure they covered all required learning to serve majors, as well as the need for Florida undergraduates to take and pass an independently administered American civics test.

CALL TO ACTION: MAKING THE CASE FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE TO LEAD

The participants found several potential avenues for collaboration as the working group advances its work. First and foremost, there is a need for greater data collection to support the work of the discipline in understanding the effects of mandates on departmental operations. This should include quantitative metrics, such as self-reported data on department capabilities and expenditures. However, it must also include qualitative data on the specifics of each state’s mandate: what states expect institutions to do to meet the requirements in terms of courses and content. The participants envisioned sections of a report in which as much information is captured about instructional practices and resource demands for as many institutions in a state as possible.

Second, institutions within a state meet the mandates differently from one another, suggesting that local institutional contexts can make the implementation of a plan that is much more difficult. In that way, information about institutions of different types across states may offer useful guidance for meeting mandates as that gleaned from across institutions within a state.

As such, the group suggested leveraging state and regional political science associations to share best practices and coordinate across institutions to complement each other’s work. One example of this work would be for two- and four-year institutions to better coordinate offerings and share resources, particularly as states call for increased access to dual-enrollment options for high school students.

Finally, the group noted the need for a summary of best practices to inform departments on how to plan to meet the mandates. This can be in the form of a task force report, with recommendations and resources tailored to states and institution types; this guidance can be targeted to chairs (for departmental advocacy) and individual faculty members (for support and best teaching practices). In addition, the fact that course requirements vary by state suggests an avenue for political science research in which scholars evaluate how mandates are best supported and civic learning objectives are met. All told, these efforts can move the discipline’s discussion of civics education forward when its role is especially vital to ensuring that students develop a meaningful understanding of, and appreciation for, American democracy. ■

PARTICIPANTS

Co-facilitator, Howard Sanborn, Oklahoma State University

• • Co-facilitator, William D. Schreckise, University of Arkansas

• • Bennet L. Grubbs, American Political Science Association

• • Christopher Spinale, University of Central Florida

• • Judithanne Scourfield, McLauchlan, University of South Florida

• • Monica C. Schneider, Miami University

• • Julia Marin Hellwege, University of South Dakota

• • Spencer Kiesel, University of Cincinnati

• • Christopher E. Housenick, Arkansas Tech University

• • Annabelle Conroy, University of Central Florida