PROVIDENCE – One or two Rhode Island high schools will participate in a high-profile national pilot program next year that will allow 10th graders who pass stringent exams to get a diploma immediately and enroll in the Community College of Rhode Island.
Rhode Island is one of eight states that have signed on to the program, which was organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) with the goal of reducing the percentage of high school graduates who need remedial courses as college freshmen. Massachusetts was the only New England state that did not sign on.
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The R.I. Department of Education said Wednesday it has not identified which schools will participate in the program, which will begin a year and a half from now at the start of the 2011-12 school year.
Education Department spokesman Elliot Krieger said the state might attempt to tweak another aspect of the NCEE program that calls for early high school graduates to enroll at open-admission schools.
CCRI is the only open-admission college in Rhode Island, but Krieger said the department plans to talk with the R.I. Office of Higher Education about the possibility of the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College participating, too.
High schools in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Vermont also are expected to participate.
Pilot schools will use a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to institute new instructional systems and exams that meet international standards, according to NCEE, a Washington-based nonprofit.
Similar exams – called Board Examination Systems – are in use in Australia, Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore, NCEE said.
Participating states are expected to pick up to five instruction programs, and accompanying exams, for use in the pilot schools.
“By introducing these Board Examination Systems in pilot high schools in these states as early as the 2011-2012 school year, we will begin a process that will ultimately prepare dramatically more students for college success and greatly reduce the high number of students who now take remedial course in college,” NCEE President Marc Tucker said in a statement.
Students who pass the exams at the end of their sophomore year but want to enter a selective college can remain in high school and take college preparatory courses instead. Students who don’t pass will be allowed to retake it as the end of their junior and senior years.
