(a) To facilitate the creation of cooperative innovative high school programs and to provide a seamless transition process from secondary to postsecondary education, the consortium shall oversee the development of a statewide high school to postsecondary agreement that shall build on aligned, secondary college-and-career technical pathways to specific postsecondary programs of study and shall include early postsecondary credit.

(b) The chancellor of the board of regents and the president of the University of Tennessee, or their designees, shall be responsible for the convocation of postsecondary faculty to develop common learning outcomes, develop statewide challenge examinations, conduct reliability and validation activities to assure the quality and fairness of the examinations, establish cut scores, and report student scores resulting from the examinations to the division of career and technical education in the department of education. Validation requirements for postsecondary credit through a dual credit course shall be determined by the postsecondary institutions and their respective governing boards.

(c) The office of postsecondary coordination and alignment, with the cooperation of the postsecondary institutions, shall make students aware of the requirements for receiving postsecondary credit for a dual credit course prior to the students' enrolling in the course.

(d) Each private postsecondary institution located in this state is encouraged to assess the statewide agreement produced by the consortium and determine which courses, if any, qualify for award of college credit at such institution. If a private institution determines that a course qualifies for award of college credit at such institution, the institution, in addition to any institutional publication made of this fact, may notify the department of education of the potential for award of college credit for such course at the institution in order that the department may disseminate the information to LEAs for notification of high school students.