One of the terms you might be hearing frequently, during this National School Choice Week, is ‘magnet school’. Magnet schools are a category of public schools with specialized curriculum, aimed at attracting a more diverse student body from throughout a school district.
Magnet schools aim to encourage students with gifts of a specific nature and flourish those gifts by offering classes that enhance them.
Magnet schools came to national attention with the success of several ‘themed’ magnet schools in New York City. These schools began offering programs tailored to the talents and affinities of students from the five boroughs beginning in the 1940s.
One of the more celebrated magnet schools is the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in NYC. This school developed a program of classes designed around students with performance aspirations. Jennifer Aniston and Robert De Niro both attended this school. It was also the basis for the successful movie and TV series, FAME.
In Mississippi, magnet schools like the Solomon Magnet School in Greenville have applied the five pillars of magnet schools…(innovative instructional programs that promote choice, equity, diversity, and academic excellence for all students)…to the disciplines of math and science.
With the advancement of testing tools that can access a child’s talents and strengths in wide array of fields, the sky is the limit for the future of ‘themed’ magnet schools. In developing your child’s performance gifts, a flair for architecture, computer coding, or other special talent, magnet schools turn talents into legends.
Beekeeping?
It might be a honey of an idea.
For more information on Mississippi ‘magnet schools’, click here. For an inside look at the FAME school, click here.
