DURHAM - When James Blackwell and his classmates from the Josephine Dobbs Clement Early College High School toss up their graduation caps today, they'll be celebrating more than receiving high school diplomas.

Many of them are also well on the way to earning a degree at N.C. Central University -- for free.

The 60 students who will graduate from Early College High, based on the NCCU campus, have spent the past four years earning both high school diplomas and undergraduate college credits.

The school is a small public high school, a model that is catching on across the state and nation, helping more students seek a higher education.

"It demystifies college," Principal Nick King said. "There is a great deal of power in seeing college students and seeing that they are people just like them."

And although there are now more than 40 similar programs in North Carolina, Blackwell and his classmates are trailblazers. Durham's program was the first in the state four years ago. Today it produces its first graduating class.

"I felt that I could excel in this situation and really be a pioneer," Blackwell said. "I had the opportunity to do something that no one else had ever done."

Other Triangle counties are not far behind. The Wake Early College of Health and Sciences opened in Raleigh two years ago. Plans are in the works for similar programs in Johnston and Chatham counties.

The schools have been launched across the country with money from charitable trusts including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In North Carolina, the schools are administered by the N.C. New Schools Project.

The Durham school started with 84 students in 2004 and has grown to more than 300. Students spend their first two years of high school in regular core classes, then transition to college-level courses in their junior and senior years, earning up to two years' credit.

If the students stay at NCCU, as 40 of the graduates plan to do, their full tuition is paid for two years.

A financial worry

Being a single mother of three, Donna Fulcher said she wasn't sure what it would take to afford college for her youngest, David.

"It would have been difficult," she said. "Or maybe he would have been off to the military."

But when the school opened at NCCU four years ago, then-Chancellor James Ammons promised the students that if they stuck with the program, he would make sure their tuition was paid.

"I'm so proud of them making it to this day," Donna Fulcher said of her son and his classmates. "A huge burden has been lifted off of us."

David Fulcher was not a standout middle-schooler, earning B's and C's. Though very bright, he was never pulled out of class with students who were labeled gifted and talented.

Yet he succeeded in his college-level courses -- including English, math, philosophy and sociology with much older students. It took hard work, study groups and tutoring, he said.

"This really lifted David educationally," his mother said. "He's really had to buckle down, but now he knows he can do it."

Unlike other accelerated high school programs, the early college focuses on taking middle-of-the-road students and pushing them to higher goals.

The schools try to recruit students who are generally under-represented in higher education, including non-native English speakers who are still perfecting the language and those whose parents did not attend college.

"Most important to us is the willingness on the part of the kid to engage in a pointed study," said King, the principal. "It's not necessary for a kid to be the best student. It's necessary for a kid to be willing to put in the work."

The graduation will take place at 3 p.m. today at NCCU's McDougald-McLendon Gymnasium on Lawson Street.