High Schools to Graduate Sophomores

About 100 high schools in 8 states will soon embark on a European experiment that could have students going off to community college after 10th grade. Sophomores who pass a battery of board examinations would be free to graduate early, or stay to prepare for application for more selective universities.

“We’ve been tied to seat time for 100 years,” Kentucky's education commissioner tells the New York Times. “This would allow an approach based on subject mastery—a system based around move-on-when-ready.” The program will launch in 2011 in Kentucky as well as Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. (More Advanced Placement test stories.)