New STEM Schools Target Underrepresented Groups

Zipporiah Bush, left, and Sadie Lisk photograph clay creations during a science and engineering class at a STEM-focused high school on the campus of North Carolina State University. It's one of a new crop of schools reaching out to populations that are underrepresented in the STEM fields.

—Sara D. Davis for Education Week

By Erik W. Robelen

Raleigh, N.C.

Few Americans may know about the Grand Challenges for Engineering—from making solar energy affordable to ensuring access to clean water—but the students at a new school on the campus of North Carolina State University are getting to know them firsthand.

The set of 21st-century challenges, devised by the National Academy of Engineering, serves as a frame and inspiration for the curriculum at this school, one of a relatively small but rapidly growing number of STEM-focused schools cropping up across the country.

At a time of heightened national attention to improving education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the development of such schools has gained momentum as a strategy to boost knowledge and...