Karen Rivedal:

A new initiative billed as bringing real-world context to high school learning is generating solid interest from eighth-graders in the Madison School District looking to join the program’s second year as freshmen next fall.

Through Thursday, 482 students had applied to be in the second cohort of the Personalized Pathways program, which is finishing its first semester Friday with 423 ninth-graders across all four main high schools.

Of the new applicants, 125 plan to attend East High School, 148 at La Follette, 124 at Memorial and 85 at West. Those numbers could change over the coming months, but interest appears to be similar to last January, when 518 initially applied, or about 24 percent to 34 percent of each school’s projected freshman class at that time.