Dive Brief:

• On Monday, Noodle released its first Innovative Schools report, which lists the top 41 most innovative public, private, and charter K-12 schools in the U.S.
• The startup, which provides educational resources to parents and teachers, sorted through 140,000 schools to compile the list, which includes Arizona's STAR School, Michigan's Clintondale High School, New York's P-TECH, California's E3 Civic High, Louisiana's FirstLine Schools, and Wisconsin's Alliance School.
• The list looked at student outcomes (depending on the objective of the school), research on different approaches, and interviews from parents, students, alumni, administrators, and teachers.

Dive Insight:

The schools highlighted are notable for their diversity, running the gamut from sustainability-focused instruction and buildings to flipped learning schools where students listen to their lectures at home. Of note is the fact that many of the schools have 1,000 students or less. For example, Pathways in Technology Early College High School, a six-year college preparation academies where students graduate with an associate’s degree, enrolls just over 500 students. Founded in 2011, the first cohort won’t graduate until 2017, but several students who graduated early have been hired by IBM.