News in Brief: A National Roundup

New York City will open three new specialized public high schools for top students in the fall, the first expansion in more than three decades of the city's competitive-admission school program. The schools will be a cooperative venture with the City University of New York and will be housed on three of the university's campuses, officials said.

The new schools will employ an "early college" approach, in which students take a high school curriculum for three years and college courses during the fourth year, allowing them to enter college as sophomores, district spokeswoman Catie Marshall said.

"This is a continuation of New York City's tradition of innovation," Ms. Marshall said. "The specialized high school program began a long time ago, and clearly there was a...