LEWISTON – Once a week, Cortney Reynolds shows up at Central Maine Community College for her evening algebra class.

At Bates College in Lewiston, Husayn Carnegie is taking anthropology.

They are somewhat different from their classmates.

They’re still in high school.

“It’s giving me a head start,” Carnegie said, adding that he now understands how much reading he’ll have to do in college. “No high school class can fully prepare you for college because it’s structured differently.”

Reynolds and Carnegie are among 96 students taking part in the Early College program offered by Lewiston High School. The aim is to boost aspirations and help more students get accepted at competitive colleges. Tuition is covered by the state, the college or Lewiston High. Books and activity fees, in most cases, are paid for by the students.

The program has been so successful that educational leaders in Maine say it could serve as a national model.

In addition to CMCC and Bates, Lewiston students this year are taking for-credit courses at Andover College, Lewiston-Auburn College and online at the University of Maine in Orono. The most popular courses are psychology and college writing.

Bates professor Loring Danforth said the high school students he has taught over the years do as well as Bates students. Taking early college classes gives high-schoolers confidence, he said.

Reynolds and Carnegie, both seniors, could receive credit next year for the college courses they’re taking this year. Not all schools accept the credits.

Both recommend other high-schoolers take early college courses if they can fit it into their schedules.

It helped Reynolds realize that “college really is the right path for me,” she said. She plans to become a nurse practitioner.

Many high schools do not offer early college programs, but the number of those that do is growing in Maine, said J. Duke Albanese of the Great Maine Schools Project at the Mitchell Institute.

However, none does it at the scale of Lewiston High School, Albanese said, calling that program “outstanding.”

Any high school in the country that wants to find out about a good program “should take the Lewiston approach,” he said. “They’ve been an inspiration, a model for others.”

Lewiston has aggressively increased the number of high school students taking college courses and has pursued more ways to make it possible.

For years only a few students took early college courses at Bates, but that program was limited. “If you weren’t in the top 10, you didn’t bother,” said Lewiston aspirations coordinator Joan Macri.

She discovered four years ago that the state allowed, and partially paid for, high school students to take courses at state colleges and universities. She wondered whether high schools could work with more than one college. She was told that would be too complicated. She decided to do it, anyway.

Lining up all of the schedules, rules and billing was complicated, Macri found out. But the colleges were patient and supportive, she said. In the fall of 2004 Lewiston High School began working with four colleges. Forty-three students took college courses. By the second semester another 20 students signed on. Now about 100 students per semester take college courses, Macri said.

The program grew by word of mouth, she said. Students found out that if they had student IDs from CMCC, they could get season passes to Lost Valley Ski Area.

“By the time you pay for your book and activity fee you’ve paid $200, tops,” Macri said. “A season pass at Lost Valley costs $500.”

In the past two years the state increased its reimbursement to schools for courses in the University of Maine and Maine Community College systems.

“There is money for students to do this,” said Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, co-chairwoman of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.

“And it had been a requirement that a student had to have a ‘B’ average,” Rotundo said. She pushed to change that after Macri told her some who would benefit the most were ‘C’ students.

“All of a sudden they caught fire and became motivated,” Rotundo said.

Parents like the program because the college credits their children earn in high school are transferable, which means it can cut costs. Not all colleges accept all credits, but many do, Macri said.

One Lewiston student graduated from high school with 18 college credits, more than a semester’s worth. All credits were accepted by the Connecticut college she attended.

Macri likes the programs for two reasons.

Students who have successfully taken college courses have a better chance of being accepted at colleges. In the past two years, fewer Lewiston students were wait-listed – accepted but put on waiting lists – by colleges.

And the college experience convinces some, especially high-schoolers who have “coasted” and haven’t seen themselves as college material, that they are.

One of Macri’s students wasn’t planning to go to college. He agreed to take one course at the community college.

He did well. He kept going, even took courses in the summer, and shaved half a year off his associate’s degree.

“He’ll have his degree in December, a year and a half after graduation,” Macri said. “That’s huge for some boys. In a year and a half they’re going to be out and earning.”