A growing number of states are encouraging kids to race through high school in three years. The reasoning: No more senior slump and lower taxpayer costs for schools. Sue Shellenbarger has details on Lunch Break. Photo: AP
With planning and foresight, Nicholas Myers of Fishers, Ind., finished high school in three years. He took required senior-year classes early and completed extra courses online. There were, of course, trade-offs: He passed up senior prom and missed a trip to New York City with the finance club.
Mr. Myers, 18, now completing his freshman year at Ball State University, says it was worth it.
"Nowadays we have CEOs in their 20s," he says. "If I get out a year early, that's a year extra of pay, and that's a year earlier of retirement. That's a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want—make some money, invest some money or just relax."
His hard work has already paid off: Mr. Myers was awarded $4,000 from the state of Indiana to be used at one of several dozen state-approved colleges or universities. In addition to Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, South Dakota and Idaho also give scholarships as an incentive to accelerate high school diplomas, often cutting public-school costs. Twenty-four other states explicitly allow early diplomas for students who earn required credits. Others are expanding ways students can earn college credit in high school, or high-school credit in middle school or junior high.
Nicholas Myers got his diploma in three years and now goesto Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., with a $4,000 scholarship from the state.
Some 2.9% of students who were sophomores in 2002 graduated from high school in three years or less, based on the latest available data; that is up from 1.5% in a previous survey in the early 1990s, says Elise Christopher, a research scientist who tracks high-school students for the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington. The scholarships are a relatively new experiment by states to motivate students to plan and complete courses efficiently. Growth in online classes and the use of proficiency testing to earn credit are speeding the trend.
'I have never felt as natural in any school or learning environment as I have in college.' —Laura Paul, Boise State University student
Proponents argue that the programs cut states' school spending and help families with college costs. They also eliminate "senioritis," a time when some students slack off on learning, says Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst with Denver-based Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit policy research and analysis organization. The slump that sets in after college acceptance was the subject of a 2001 study by a government-funded commission, which recommended developing alternatives to the traditional senior year in the classroom.
That said, some education experts say there are downsides to three-year diplomas. Critics question whether students can be "emotionally or otherwise ready to enroll in college full-time at the age of 17," Ms. Zinth says. "Many people think four years is necessary." Also, early grads may have a more difficult time getting into competitive colleges, according to a study last year by researchers at Jobs for the Future, a Boston nonprofit group that promotes improvements in education and work force strategies; they may not have time to complete advanced-placement or college-level courses such colleges like to see.
Early Exit
The Three-Year Diploma Debate
Roland Priebe encouraged his son Luke to graduate early because regular middle- and high-school classes were a bad fit for his academically gifted son. "He was frustrated at the speed of learning. I didn't want him to lose his love for school," says Mr. Priebe, an editorial and graphic-design consultant in Chicago.
When he helped Luke arrange to skip prerequisites for some classes and enroll in dual-credit college courses, "he had a chance to learn at his own speed and he was re-energized." Luke adds that by his third year of high school, he had run out of math and science classes to take. He wanted to move on to college to study applied math and computer science.
But to meet admissions standards for Ivy League schools, Luke had to take such a heavy load of courses, advanced-placement exams and extracurricular activities that he worked seven days a week for almost two years. He took eight AP exams in a single year, teaching himself much of the material. By graduation, "I was just exhausted. I needed a break," says Luke, who is 18. Before entering Brown University in the fall, he will take a year off (with Brown's approval) to work with his 22-year-old brother, Alexander, in a Web-development company they co-founded.
"In retrospect, what Luke did was crazy," Mr. Priebe says. "Graduating in three years and building the extra credentials necessary to be appealing to Ivy League and other top colleges, including extracurricular and community-service activities, is just too much." Students who aspire to an elite college would be better off staying four years, he says. (It is possible to enter college without a high school diploma or equivalent, but those instances are rare.)
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Bryan Anselm for the Wall Street Journal'If I get out a year early, that's a year extra of pay, and that's a year earlier of retirement. That's a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want.' —Nicholas Myers, Ball State student
Laura Paul was dying to graduate early for a different reason—to move on to a more diverse, cosmopolitan world than her Boise, Idaho, high school. Laura wanted to attend the University of Hawaii, where she was accepted after graduating from high school in three years. "I was so tempted to go," Laura says. "I love the beach and the ocean, and I was so ready for a change."
But her mother Joan said no. At 17, Ms. Paul says, Laura was "so young that I really wouldn't be comfortable with her moving" so far away. Also, Idaho gives an average scholarship of $1,471 to early grads who attend an in-state college, and Ms. Paul wanted Laura to use it.
Laura says enrolling at nearby Boise State University has satisfied her needs so far. One of her first classes included students from Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa, a breast-cancer survivor in her 60s, and a man in his 50s who told stories from a career in retailing.
"Instead of high school, where everyone comes from the same neighborhoods and are the same ages and grew up the same way and think the same way, you get so many different perspectives and ways of learning," Laura says. "I have never felt as natural in any school or learning environment as I have in college. It's the best choice I ever made, to graduate early."
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 11, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: High School, Only Shorter.
