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Several States Making College-Prep Courses The Default Curriculum

Corpus Christi, Texas

As they prepare to enter high school next fall, 8th graders in public schools across Texas are being given a choice of three different academic plans to follow through graduation, two of which are distinctively tougher than the third.

Yet when those options were recently explained to a class at Tom Browne Middle School here, the easiest option, known as the “minimum” academic plan, was nowhere to be found.

Instead, all the students in the class were limited to checking one of two boxes, indicating which of two college-prep routes they would pursue: the “recommended” or the “distinguished achievement”...