Magnet Schools

In education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities (usually school boards) as school zones that feed into certain schools.

There are magnet schools at the elementary school, middle school, and high school levels. In the United States, where education is decentralized, some magnet schools are established by school districts and draw only from the district, while others (such as the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, Las Vegas Academy, Clark High School Academy of Finance, Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Applied Technology, Maine School of Science and Mathematics, and Commonwealth Governor's Schools in Virginia) are set up by state governments and may draw from multiple districts. Other magnet programs are within comprehensive schools, as is the case with several "schools within a school." In large urban areas, several magnet schools with different specializations may be combined into a single "center," such as Skyline High School in Dallas.

Other countries have similar types of schools, such as specialist schools in Britain or Anatolian high schools in Turkey. The majority of these are academically selective. The two other types are built around elite sporting programs, with the other type being agricultural, which are schools intended to pass on skills specific to agricultural business such as farming or animal breeding.