Jennifer Jones is a teacher at Arlington High School, TN, who has been teaching Dual Enrollment English since 2005. “Dual Enrollment English is standard level College English, but you get honors credit for it in high school.”

According to educationnext.com, “Between the 2002-3 and 2010-11 academic years, the number of high school students taking college courses for credit increased by 68 percent, to nearly 1.4 million…” Dual Enrollment classes provide the chance for students to graduate high school, beginning college with a GPA and certain classes already out of the way.

As of the 2021-2022 school year, Arlington currently offers five dual classes for juniors and 14 dual classes for seniors. These classes include career ready classes, science classes, english, math, and even history. Ms. Jones gives advice to those currently in dual or planning to take it, “Work through that procrastination, work on your time management.” Not only does taking dual enrollment classes help to start off college with a GPA, taking dual enrollment also helps with the cost of college. “The state pays for it, so your tuition is drastically discounted. I think my English class is $500 for the whole year. Taking it in college is $2,400. They have a pretty big difference.”

More benefits according to bestcolleges.com, “Earning college credit while still in high school can be extremely rewarding, as it not only allows students to get a head start on their degrees, but also exposes them to the rigors of college courses. Additionally, these programs give students the opportunity to demonstrate their readiness for college life and academics to college admissions committees.“

Ms. Jones is an advocate for Dual Enrollment classes, saying “I think students should take as many dual classes as they can. I know at other schools, and if it was offered here, a student could choose to take dual from ninth through twelfth grade and could earn enough dual credit classes to basically graduate high school with an associate’s degree.”