Escalating concerns have kept changes to the state's Dual Credit Quality Act from advancing — for now.
A task force of Heartland Community College faculty collected more than 500 signatures raising strong opposition to a proposed amendment that poses challenges to community colleges across the state.
Heartland’s full- and part-time faculty unions partnered to form the four-member task force that dove into available data to evaluate institutional trends correlating course pass rate, curricula, teacher evaluation alignment and matriculation into Heartland among in-district high schoolers enrolled in dual credit courses — something Heartland had not previously tracked.
Their report found Heartland has seen steep losses in traditional enrollments and faculty positions over the past five years as dual credit participation ballooned.
“We had a 47% reduction in the number of part-time faculty teaching English at the college,” said task force member and adjunct business professor Jean-Marie Taylor, who's worked at Heartland for three decades. “Full-time faculty also saw a drop in their numbers.”
Taylor emphasized the task force’s concerns are not limited to jobs.
“We’re concerned about equity, for example,” she said. “We want to ensure that students are getting an opportunity to participate in dual credit if they’re eligible. We want to ensure that our part-time faculty at the college are assessed in the same way that our colleagues teaching dual credit in the high schools are assessed.”
The Dual Credit Quality Act (DCQA) passed in 2010 and was revised in 2018, establishing statewide guidelines for high school students taking college-level courses for credit. The law requires community colleges to enter an agreement with high schools when asked.
House Bill 5020, amending the DCQA, allows high schools to shop outside their districts for a dual credit partner. Courses are taught by high school teachers unless the school cannot produce a qualified teacher, in which case the community college partner may supply one. The law does not stipulate whether community colleges should charge tuition; Heartland’s dual credit programs, called “College Now,” are subsidized by state funds and students are only required to pay for textbooks.
One version of the amendment stipulated that high school teachers with 2,000 classroom hours [approximately achieved within the first year of teaching] may be eligible to teach dual credit courses that require a master’s degree in equivalent courses at Heartland. That language has since been removed from the most recent proposal. Teacher evaluation forms used to assess Heartland and dual credit courses are remarkably different.
“We want to make sure we’re using the same curriculum and teaching the same level,” Taylor said. “We really do support and engage regularly as a college in assessing where we are and engaging in continuous quality improvement. So, this was an opportunity for us to take a more comprehensive look at everything that was going on.”
College ready vs. ‘college done’
The task force’s findings imply dual credit may be expanding equity gaps it is intended to close, demonstrated by a weak relationship with Pell Grant recipients and poor matriculation rates to Heartland — suggesting dual credit students take those free Heartland credits elsewhere. Just 22% of dual credit graduates enrolled in Heartland are Pell Grant-eligible.
“We have to ask ourselves, where are these students going?” said Jeremy Bachelor, another task force member. "Or are they just getting their entire associate’s degrees at the high school? So, instead of being college ready, they’re college done — which really wasn’t the point of the legislation. The students who may be able to afford [Heartland] are the ones who aren’t paying. The money that’s going into these students isn’t really investing in our community at all.”
Students enrolled in dual credit have to meet pre-requisite requirements to enroll, suggesting a connection between dual credit equity gaps and high school achievement gaps.
“If by the time they reach junior year of high school they aren’t college ready, they’re excluded from these courses,” Bachelor said. There may be further barriers, such as the cost of textbooks, which limit participation among some students deemed “college ready.”
A statewide study supported this concern, finding that dual credit programs are more prevalent in rural, downstate communities and predominantly serve white, affluent students — contradicting the goal of closing equity gaps by lowering barriers to college. That trend holds not just between, but also within districts: White, affluent students deemed to be “college ready” were more likely to enroll in dual credit courses than minority and low-income counterparts in the same school district.
Fails to leave committee
H.B. 5020 was not brought up for a vote in the Illinois General Assembly’s Higher Education Committee last week. In addition to collecting signatures opposing the amendment, Taylor and Bachelor met with state Rep. Sharon Chung, D-Bloomington, who serves the 91st district and sits on the committee.
The lobbying group "Stand for Children Illinois" have been key proponents of the bill. An internally circulated email obtained by WGLT said members of the group plan to meet with state Rep. Blair Sherlock soon to “hammer out a deal.” The email says community college presidents and trustees are neutral on the bill, they just have to “get the unions on board.”
Send in the adjuncts
Among the task force’s suggestions are aligning curricula, teacher credentials and evaluations, so students who choose to attend Heartland after taking dual credit courses have a softer landing entering college.
“Everyone understands that when students come to Heartland having completed English 101 and 102 — which is almost all of them — we’re going to see reductions in on-campus enrollment, which then starts impacting employment,” Bachelor said.
Potential solutions include assigning adjunct faculty to those courses.
“We have qualified faculty that could go to the high schools, and we could look at some alternative delivery methods,” Taylor said.
“And address the teacher shortage directly,” added Bachelor. “That’s why they want to pass this legislation. Why not use our adjuncts, who are ready and willing to take on more courses locally? Why aren’t we making use of them? I don’t understand that.”
