ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Even before she starts high school this fall, Sade Banks is planning her graduation. She aims to finish high school in three years and "get out there in the world and see what it has to offer."
"There's nothing that can really stop you if you want something bad enough," said Sade, a bright-eyed 13-year-old who's been at the top of her class since second grade. "I'm real laid back, I'm cool, but I'm also very serious about education."
While it's not hard to find teenagers itching to put high school behind them, the school district in this city of 220,000 near Lake Ontario is offering its incoming freshmen an unusual set of options: Earn a diploma in three, four or five years.
Drawing on the college model, flexibility in elementary and high school is increasingly seen as an idea whose time has come. While high school students have long been accommodated in making early or later exits, Rochester and Chicago are jumping ahead of public schools nationally by formally laying out curriculum tracks of varying lengths.
"This was an idea too simple to see and too big to ignore," said Rochester schools Superintendent Clifford Janey. "There's no reason to hold a kid in harm's way if, in fact, they're ready to finish in three years. We have kids now who just waste their senior year."
Most of Rochester's 2,367 incoming freshman plan to stick to a four-year path when the program begins this fall, but 290 will try to graduate one year sooner and 160 want to tack on an extra year.
Those on the three-year plan still have to meet the same minimum course requirements set by the state and school district, but with the option of summer school, they also can fit in additional classes.
The five-year plan is intended for students who need more help. It allows them to spread four years of courses over five years, scheduling them to spend longer blocks of time in subjects in which they struggle.
Janey used statistics to sell the program to the school board last year: More than 6 percent of Rochester students were taking between 4.5 to 6 years to complete high school. Those students were repeatedly failing in the traditional system. By giving them more instruction and letting them progress at a slower pace, more of them would succeed.
"As we move into the 21st century," predicted Dan Domenech, schools superintendent in Fairfax County, Va., "you're going to see more models like what Rochester is proposing as opposed to just retaining the existing K-12 structure and continuing to pigeonhole kids on grade levels by how old they are, rather than by their ability to learn."
Some educators still worry that students in accelerated programs could be pushed through high school too quickly and then run into difficulties making the transition to college or getting hired in competition with older teens.
In addition, "many kids have hardships where their family is depending upon them to be breadwinners and to accelerate their schooling," said Will J. Jordan of Johns Hopkins University.
"In some cases, they have jobs lined up and all they want to do is have the high school diploma," he said. "The kid may be capable of doing so much more than being a fender man in his uncle's body shop."
Each student's pace in Rochester is prearranged through parents and school counselors before the school year begins. Academic stars who finish in three years but "whose emotional intelligence is not fully developed" will be offered internships or college-level courses for an extra year and the possibility of studying abroad, Janey said.
"What's rewarding is that kids are now thinking about the high school experience in the context of a plan as opposed to just an experiment or an experience," he said.
If Sade succeeds in graduating in June 2004, still five months shy of her 17th birthday, she has promised to enroll in a college close to home, perhaps no farther away than Buffalo.
She also knows that "if she feels she needs to, she can add on a fourth year" at high school, said her mother, Victoria. "But I think she will be able to handle college. She's just a high achiever. She puts a lot of hard work into whatever she does."
Sade, who's already focusing on a career in journalism, took a summer class in English this month to earn her fourth credit toward graduation. "If you're not willing to work hard, go to night classes and go to summer classes, then it's not the thing for you," she said.