In the midst of his 2004 re-election campaign, Gov. Mike Easley announced the Learn and Earn Early College High School Initiative, a plan to create high schools on college campuses, add a year to the curriculum, and graduate students with diplomas and associates degrees at the same time.

In his press release, the governor outlined contrasting goals for the “Learn and Earn Early College High School Initiative,” saying this “new model of high school” would give students a boost for future jobs with higher educational requirements.

A year and half into the project, there are 14 such schools in operation, 23 more planned for this fall, and a goal of 75 by 2008. The first students will not graduate until the program is statewide, though, and leaders say Learn and Earn’s true impact will not be known until sometime in the future.

Geoff Coltrane, director of research and communications for the North Carolina New Schools Project, which administers Learn and Earn in partnership with the Department of Public Instruction, explained the program’s focus in terms of both academics and “soft skills.”

“The goal of the Learn and Earn schools is to prepare students to meet the needs of the high tech, biotech, and other jobs which are coming to replace those jobs lost in the state since 2000,” Coltrane said. “They need to be ready to work in teams, to communicate orally and in writing, and be more analytical in their work to be prepared for the demands of 21st century work and citizenship.”

To do this, Learn and Earn creates five-year high schools on the campus of local colleges or universities. Ninth- and 10th-grade programs are redesigned to prepare students for college work as early as their first year, with the ultimate goal of leaving “grade 13” with a two-year degree or two years of transferable credit. Schools are limited to 400 students, with extra counseling staff to assist with the transition from eighth grade to a college campus.

But while emphasizing the benefits of college credit, Easley also promoted Learn and Earn as a dropout-reduction tool. “[W]e are still losing too many students between grades nine and 12 who drop out,” he said. “This plan will give high school students another option that provides them with a marketable degree that prepares them for the workforce.”

Coltrane said it is too early to measure what impact Learn and Earn is having on graduation rates; nearly all the 800 students involved with the program are ninth- and 10th-graders. “We have some initial numbers, but nothing firm,” Coltrane said. Smaller schools and longer relationships between students and faculty will better enable teachers to detect and help faltering students, he said.

Meg Turner, principal of Buncombe County Early College in Asheville, sees her school as one part of the larger effort to improve graduation rates. The “Middle College” program that preceded BCEC, she said, “was truly a drop-out prevention program. We only took juniors and seniors who were truly on the verge of dropping out.” The Early College model is totally different, both in demographics and in approach, she said.

“The way I like to think about that is the more options a school district has for schools, the more likely a kid will find what he needs, and the less likely he’ll be to drop out. Early College creates another alternative,” she said.

Unlike either accelerated programs for gifted students or efforts to target at-risk students for assistance, Learn and Earn is specifically looking for a diverse demographic. According to program guidelines, students are selected to reflect the local population. All of them, though, are expected to complete the college level curriculum.

While the governor’s initiative has received national attention, it is not the only way high schoolers can pick up college credits. In fact, with its cap of 400 students at each campus, Learn and Earn is one of the more-limited alternatives.

Dual enrollment, where high schoolers enroll in community college classes alongside traditional students, and Huskins programs, where public schools contract with colleges to teach certain courses, have existed for a number of years. While uncommon, some energetic students have completed the full requirements to pick up their associates degree while still attending a traditional four-year high school.

Advanced Placement courses in the traditional high school are another alternative. According to the state Department of Public Instruction, more than 34,000 North Carolina students took AP courses last year, sitting for 62,358 final exams, which could earn each of them three or more credit hours in college. Some private schools also offer the courses, and homeschoolers can use a variety of online programs and correspondence classes to cover the same material.

Turner explained how the Early College high schools’ approach trims wasted effort from the curriculum to compress a six-year course sequence into five. “We blend courses, eliminate duplicated objectives, and find a different way of looking at high school credit, college credit, and how they’re awarded,” she said. For example, BCEC is negotiating with a host campus, Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, to adjust the college’s U.S. history syllabus to address high school requirements, too. This required a waiver from the Department of Public Instruction, but it will eliminate one year of duplicated study for the subject.

Ken Whitehurst, who oversees Learn and Earn programs for the N.C. Community College System, sees this as one of the key advantages of the project. “I think it’s really great to cause community colleges and the public schools to sit down together and work on developing a common curriculum.”

Turner said her 52 students, all ninth-graders, are taking a criminal-justice class this semester, which will count as a high school elective. Younger students mainly finish up prerequisite high school classes before tackling full course loads of college work in years four and five.

There are other challenges embedded in the rapidly expanding program. Whitehurst said that community colleges provide the classroom space while DPI provides the teachers and students. Facilities to accommodate both Learn and Earn and the colleges’ traditional students might become an issue as the high schools grow, he said.

There is also potential for mixing more than curriculum on campus, as high school students, some as young as 13, share classes with adult students. Whitehurst points to the dual enrollment experience of the colleges, and doesn’t foresee a problem. “This is not our first time in this area,” he said.

Turner takes it seriously, though. “[W]e really have to be careful for student safety,” she said. “When we were the Middle College, those were all 16- and 17-year-olds, but 14 is a different matter.”

“It’s important to families that we stay on top of this,” she said.

Hal Young is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.