Free Republic

BOISE, Idaho – Every high school has at least a handful of them, gifted students who blow through Faulkner as if it were a comic book, teenagers who catch on to calculus as if it were checkers. These students are often just marking time in high school and typically become bored and withdrawn as they long for a bigger academic challenge. States are responding to the problem by making it easier for gifted students to head off to college sooner. Idaho lawmakers have proposed giving scholarships to high school students who enroll in college early. Eight other states are participating...

Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College. When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home. There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma...

The Track Not Taken by: Allie Winegar Duzett, September 30, 2009 Students today can sometimes go to high school and college simultaneously—but what happens when it’s over? “With nearly half of African-American students and 40 percent of Latino students attending high schools where the majority of students do not graduate, we must change our approach,” Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education stated at a recent hearing. What witnesses before the committee intended to do was expand the so-called “dual enrollment” program, in which students can go to high school and college...

BERKELEY – Charles Pierce really likes playing video games. He practices piano and violin. He used to study aikido, but lately he's been more interested in taking up fencing. Lately, however, the 13-year-old has mostly been hitting the books. Charles is the youngest transfer student this fall at the University of California, Berkeley, where he's now in his junior year. His 14-year-old sister, Mayumi, also transferred in this fall as a junior. Attending UC Berkeley is a bit of a family tradition: Their parents, Wincie Pierce and Qin Ma, met and married while they were students at UC Berkeley in...