February 15, 2020

Programs that allow high school students to simultaneously take community college courses, called dual enrollment, are effective in raising high school graduation rates and college enrollment, especially among students who might not otherwise have been college bound. But students in only one in eight high schools in California participate in these programs, according to the Wheelhouse Center at the UC Davis School of Education.

This week, we speak with Leslie Hsu Freeman, manager of dual enrollment for Oakland Unified, about the value of this increasingly popular strategy. About 1,000 high school students in Oakland now take college courses each semester which are taught by college professors on the district’s 15 high school campuses.  

We also talk about the weeklong protests at Berkeley High School, where students say the administration has not done enough in response to sexual harassment and assault carried out by classmates, including the impact of assaults at non-school events on the school culture itself. Students are demanding additional counselors, more education beginning in earlier grades, and other proactive measures in what could signal increased activism in high schools over the issue.

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