College and Career Ready Virginia greatly expanded dual enrollment opportunities for students around the Commonwealth and during the first full year of implementation in 2025-26, school division and community colleges partnered to ensure Passport and Uniform Certificate of General Studies (UCGS) pathway access for eligible students.

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) increased their collaboration and partnership to support school divisions and community colleges with this requirement, including robust data collection, both qualitative and quantitative, to inform next steps for continuous improvement.

From that data collection, several points are worth highlighting.

• Dual enrollment courses are important to students in Virginia and the implementation of CCRV removes the access barrier of cost. Data collected by VDOE shows an increase in enrollment by almost 15,000 students in the past five years (2020-21 to 2025-26).

• Teacher credentialing is an area of growth for dual enrollment that VCCS is actively working to address in the upcoming year. In some school divisions, CCRV created additional demand for teachers and illuminated inconsistencies in teacher credentialing that supports the changes and updates to the proposed VCCS guidelines.

• Although DE enrollment is high across the Commonwealth, data collected by VDOE in 2024-25 notes that 24% of students enrolled in DE courses are economically disadvantaged, 3% are English Learners, and 3% are Students with Disabilities. While CCRV removed the barrier of cost for many students, students furthest from opportunity still struggle to access these courses for various reasons, including lack of awareness, confusion around accommodations for students with disabilities in the dual enrollment environment, and gaps in support for English Learners. VDOE and VCCS are actively collaborating with internal and external partners to ensure that every eligible student in the Commonwealth is aware of what dual enrollment is, the transferability of dual enrollment credits, and how it can be accessed by all student groups within local high schools.

• In discussions about student outcome data between VCCS, VDOE, and SCHEV, team members agreed that in future years, data will be included for students that graduate with the Passport/UCGS and matriculate to a two-year or four-year college or university. That data was unavailable for this current year but should be available in future years, in partnership with National Clearinghouse. Additionally, data collection efforts will continue to be refined, updated, and streamlined for the upcoming year.

In the 2026-27 school year, VDOE and VCCS will continue to work collaboratively to support students in achieving positive postsecondary outcomes associated with College and Career Ready Virginia.