Just when I thought it would be dif­fi­cult to track down more like­minded U.S. pro­grams ded­i­cated to prep­ping high school­ers for col­lege, my skep­ti­cism was trumped by an incred­i­bly bold pro­gram gain­ing speed across the country.

The Early Col­lege High School Ini­tia­tive was started in 2002 to redesign high schools such that their cur­ricu­lum offers up to two years of col­lege credit (FOR FREE) to cur­rent stu­dents. Lemme repeat that. Get two years of col­lege under your belt in high school. For free.

More than 200 schools in 24 states have signed on, includ­ing nearly a dozen which made this year's U.S. News & World Report's list of America's Best High Schools.

So, the Early Col­lege High School Ini­tia­tive doesn't have a snazzy acronym, unfor­tu­nately. Hence­forth, we can refer to it as Early College.

Early Col­lege doesn't just offer its college-toting ser­vices to already-robust pro­grams replete with col­lege prepara­tory pro­grams. Instead, they tar­get low-income stu­dents, first-generation col­lege prospec­tives and Eng­lish lan­guage learn­ers, sim­i­lar to GEAR UP, which I wrote about last week.

While national polls esti­mate that about 66% of high school­ers attend col­lege upon grad­u­a­tion, a whop­ping 89% of stu­dents in Early Col­lege pro­gram enroll in fur­ther­ing their edu­ca­tion. I wish I could con­firm if that pun was intended.

How­ever, it's easy to gush over forward-thinking BG-like pro­grams with­out acknowl­edg­ing crit­i­cisms of the pro­gram, of which there is some. South Carolina's SC Now cited a recent dis­pute in one of their local school dis­tricts, stem­ming from admin­is­tra­tors' inabil­ity to imple­ment the pro­gram with­out shift­ing stu­dents between dif­fer­ent cam­puses. Par­ents protested at the lack of orga­ni­za­tion and struc­ture, understandably.

As a Bet­ter­Grads vol­un­teer and sup­porter, I rec­og­nize the logis­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in try­ing to take a stab at our often-needy edu­ca­tion sys­tem. At the very least, we're send­ing a clear, con­sis­tent mes­sage that we will con­tinue to sup­port the idea that every Amer­i­can stu­dent can, and should, have access to a col­lege education.

If Bet­ter­Grads, GEAR UP, Early Col­lege and sim­i­lar pro­grams strike a chord with you, fol­low us on Twit­ter to keep up-to-date with activ­ity keep­ing our dream afloat.