When James Fletcher first walked into a college classroom last year, he was understandably nervous. After all, he was just a high school sophomore.

"Everyone else seemed so intelligent, taking notes," he says. "I was in the back looking silly."

But James, a student at Dayton Early College Academy (DECA) in Ohio, passed the philosophy course with a B-plus. Now, he is eager for more college-level work.

James and other DECA students are in the vanguard of a small but fast-growing school reform effort: helping academically challenged high school students by enrolling them in college-level courses.

They may seem counterintuitive, but early college high schools, as they're known, increase academic rigor while boosting support to help teens succeed.

Usually set at a local community college, they expect that students will take at least some - and often two years' worth - of regular college classes.

Rather than target the brightest students, the schools enroll the disengaged and unprepared, and almost all are in high-poverty, minority-heavy districts.

"You think about the lack of engagement, the high dropout rate, the low college-going rate - something had to happen," says Michael Webb, an associate vice president of the Early College High School Initiative, an umbrella organization.

The modern incarnation of the early college high school began four years ago with LaGuardia Community College's International High School in New York, and the movement is quickly gaining traction. Mr. Webb's group counts 48 early college high schools that began last year, and this year, 64 more will open their doors.

In North Carolina, the governor's "Learn and Earn" program plans to launch 75 early college high schools by 2008. And the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a powerful force in high-school reform efforts, has put more than $100 million behind the effort.

Because the movement is so new, data is slim. But the results so far are encouraging. The first cohort of LaGuardia students graduate this fall; all 30 are expected to graduate, with college credit, and 23 are on course to earn full two-year associates degrees by next summer.

And teachers say they've seen extraordinary progress among students. Megan Arnold, a social studies and Spanish teacher at DECA, urged one girl who seemed ready to drop out last year to start writing a novel. The girl became reengaged in school and made up months of work that she'd missed. This fall, she tested into a first-year college English class.

The schools are just one in a growing battalion of reform efforts at the high-school level that includes charter schools, small schools, and schools that focus on a specialized niche of students.

Faced with high dropout rates and low college-attendance rates, especially among low-income students, education reformers increasingly see big, traditional schools as part of the problem.

The High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), released last month by Indiana University, showed low levels of student preparation and interest among the 81,000 students who took the survey. More than half said they had not discussed work with a teacher outside of class, and less than half said they'd opt for the same high school again if given a choice.

Even more disturbing was the disconnect between student aspirations and schoolwork.

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