Dive Brief:

• The Mississippi Department of Education and the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning have formed a new partnership that will allow more students to gain automatic entry into one of the state’s eight public universities and will grant automatic credit for qualifying scores for Advanced Placement (AP) classes taken in high school, the Daily Journal reports.
• Beginning this school year, all students without significant disability will select one of the three diploma endorsements before starting 9th grade: a Career and Technical Endorsement designed to lead to direct employment or community college attendance; an Academic Endorsement requiring a 2.5 GPA, 26 Carnegie units and the meeting of community college readiness benchmarks on the ACT or SAT, or a Distinguished Academic Endorsement requiring a 3.0 GPA, 28 units, and the meeting of national college readiness benchmarks on the ACT or SAT. Attainment of either the second or third endorsement will provide automatic enrollment in state public universities beginning in 2022.
• The new partnership also means that, beginning in the fall of 2019, all Mississippi public universities will automatically award three hours of college credit for a score of three or higher on an AP exam. Scores of four or five on an exam could earn up to six hours college credit, depending on the subject.