CCSD students are pursuing college credit opportunities more than ever
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Clark County School District (CCSD) students are pursuing more college credit opportunities than ever by enrolling in dual enrollment.
Dual enrollment is a program that allows high school students to take college courses and earn credits toward their degree.
"I'm only taking two dual enrollment classes. I am taking dual enrollment English, which is English 101 and 102. Then I am taking dual enrollment political science," said Riley Webster, a student at Desert Oasis High School.
Webster is a senior who hopes to get her teaching degree once she graduates high school. She is one of hundreds of students at Oasis High School taking dual enrollment courses. She said taking college-level classes will help her become a teacher much faster.
"I've had this planned out for a long time. I plan to go into elementary education over at UNLV right out of high school," said Webster. "My freshman English teacher, Ms Natalie Burt, actually inspired me to become a teacher and go into education. And I was thinking, I love working with young minds and like younger kids, so I was like, " I think elementary school is like the perfect place for me."
Webster is not alone.
At Desert Oasis High School, more than 300 students are enrolled in one or more dual credit courses this year, an increase from the 95 students who participated in dual enrollment last year.
According to CCSD, dual enrollment participation increased 400 percent from 2019-2020 to the current school year. This year, across the district, there were roughly 17,732-course enrollments for the 2024-2025 school year, compared to 4,430-course enrollments last year.
"These gains were made possible because of the hard work of our educators working to increase access and opportunities for students to participate in advanced-level coursework. We are also so very grateful for our partners in the Nevada System of Higher Education who work closely with us to provide these opportunities for our students," said Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell. "Every student deserves the opportunity to participate and excel in their academic journey, and we are pleased to offer these opportunities to support them.
"It saves money, so that was one of the biggest contenders like you don't have pay as much to take a dual credit class versus what you would have to pay doing at a university," said Webster.
Student Dual Enrollment Increases over the past five years:
The college-level courses offered through the College of Southern Nevada; Nevada State University; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and the University of Nevada, Reno, allow CCSD students to earn college credits that transfer to the Nevada System of Higher Education schools.
Channel 13 spoke with Gia Moore, the assistant superintendent of college and career readiness and school choice at CCSD, and asked her what's behind the uptick.
"We have been very intentional as a district to prioritize these opportunities for our families and our students, but it's a lot of different things. We have a great partnership with our institutions. We are prioritizing planning with our schools to make sure that all of our students have access to advanced-level coursework. So we have been doing a lot of strategic planning with our principals over the past few years, looking at areas where we can grow these opportunities within their master schedules and really taking a deep dive into data to see the students that have potential but haven't yet engaged in these advanced level courses," said Moore.
She said the students in dual enrollment courses do better in college than students who don't take the classes.
"Regardless of pass rate, we see our students being more successful in their freshman year of college as opposed to students that have not engaged in that kind of course work," said Moore.
