The 14 most innovative schools in America LinkedIn icon The word "in". Email icon An envelope. It indicates the ability to send an email.

LPA American education catches a lot of flack for falling behind other countries in global rankings, but test scores aren't everything. The truth is, some of the most cutting-edge learning takes place on US soil. We consulted education experts from Google as well as past assessments from InnoveEdu and Noodle to arrive at a comprehensive list of schools that embody innovation in a variety of forms. There is the Arizona school where Native American students learn about sustainability and agriculture; the school in Michigan where kids learn about zoology; the New York City school for LGBT youth; and many more. Together, the schools demonstrate that equations and vocabulary tests, while essential, aren't the only things that matter in schooling. They're a small piece of the much larger pursuit to mold young minds.

Star School. Flagstaff, AZ. The school that's off the grid. STAR School Navajo children make up 99% of the student body at Star School, the first public elementary school in the US to get all of its energy from solar power. Students grow their own food in the school's greenhouses, take culinary classes, and develop solutions for the local problem of unclean drinking water, says Mark Sorensen, co-founder and CEO of STAR School. "We believe that our orientation to service projects in the community and using our community's culture as a rich resource in contextualizing learning are what make us successful." Students also learn the 4 Rs, which come from the Navajo culture: Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, and Reasoning. As a result, Sorensen says the school hasn't had a fist fight in over six years and bullying is rare.

Brightworks School. San Francisco, CA. The school that teaches dangerously. Brightworks Launched by visionary Gever Tulley in 2011, Brightworks takes some of the most dangerous things parents tell their kids not to do and makes an entire curriculum out of them. Kids in grades K to 12 get dirty, play with fire, take apart home appliances, and complete art projects all in the same day. "We invite students to be co-authors of their education, embracing and supporting the individual and the unique set of skills and interests that motivate them," Tulley and Justine Macauley, Brightworks' program coordinator, tell Tech Insider in an email. The school is housed in an expansive warehouse filled with art, forts, makeshift theaters — all of which are meant to tap into kids' creative side. "The world needs more people who see the hardest challenges as interesting puzzles and have the creative capacity, skills, and tenacity to make change happen," Tulley and Macauley say.

e3 Civic High School. San Diego, CA. The school inside a library. LPA Tucked inside the New San Diego Central Library in downtown San Diego, the charter high school gives lower-income kids access to research facilities, study abroad opportunities, and project-based instruction — all with nearly unlimited resources for satisfying their curiosities. E3 — so named for its mission to engage, educate, and empower — opened three years ago, following a study that found more than half of San Diego's students leave the downtown area to attend high school. City officials saw the exit as a sign the region needed improvement. The result is a school that lives on the sixth and seventh floors of the local library and embodies its mission through design. E3 is LEED Gold-certified and features movable walls, modular furniture, and a plaza for assemblies and meals.

Alliance School. Milwaukee, WI. The school that wants to stop bullying. Alliance School A grant from the Gates Foundation in 2005 kickstarted this middle and high school founded on an anti-bullying philosophy. With a quarter of the kids having disabilities, half identifying as LGBT, and 75% coming from low-income families, the charter school thrives on open-mindedness and respect. A great deal of research has found bullying can limit kids' academic achievement. Tina Owen-Moore, the co-founder and head teacher at Alliance, wants to use that evidence as fuel to ensure her students never have to face those setbacks. Teachers routinely structure their lessons to make them as inclusive as possible, relying heavily on group projects, and many students visit nearby schools to spread the anti-bullying message. The result is a school where kids respect one another and feel safe to be themselves. "We use restorative practices, anti-bullying policies, community building, and service learning to build a community where all students feel safe and accepted, regardless of gender, sexuality, appearance, ability, or beliefs," Owen-Moore tells Tech Insider. "Our motto is 'Be yourself. Get a great education.'"

THINK Global School. The world. The school without borders. THINK Global School Though it's headquartered in New York City, THINK Global School is a high school without walls. Students spend each semester in a different country, learning about local culture, studying natural sciences, and reading classic literature. Last year, students spent the fall semester in Costa Rica and the spring in Greece. "As they sailed from island to island in the Ionian Sea, they delved deep into lessons on philosophy, art, and literature — just truly embracing the moment while in this gorgeous environment," Lee Carlton, an IT analyst at THINK, tells Tech Insider. "It's a place-based learning activity that we're incredibly proud of and something our kids gained a lot from." In each country, students also pursue charity projects and community-based work. For parents who want their kids to become global citizens, there's no better school than THINK.

The Young Women's Leadership Network. New York, NY. The school rebalancing power. Young Women's Leadership Network In an effort to close the gap between men and women in high-ranking roles, New York City's Young Women's Leadership Schools instill in its all-female student body the knowledge that achievement can be gender-neutral. Since its 1996 founding, the model has expanded to more than a dozen affiliate schools nationwide, serving 8,000 students. "It is critically important to focus on girls' leadership development, since women, and particularly women of color, are underrepresented in corporate board rooms, science labs, the halls of Congress and in other key decision-making arenas," Jemina Bernard, executive director of the Young Women's Leadership Network, tells Tech Insider. "Changing the face of leadership is central to building a more democratic and equitable society." According to Bernard, students at TYWLS achieve four-year college degrees at nearly triple the rate of their peers.

Zoo School. Grand Rapids, MI. The school with animals. Zoo School The sixth-grade-only public school immerses kids in a year-long program at the John Ball Zoological Garden, where they raise animals, take classes on anatomy and astronomy, and develop a research project that gets presented at the end of the year. John Helmholdt, executive director of communications & external affairs for Grand Rapids Public Schools, says Zoo School highlights the impact place-based experiential learning can have. "Students interact with professional staff members at the zoo and get behind-the-scenes opportunities with the care and feeding of the animals that really no other school kids experience," Helmholdt tells Tech Insider. "They want to experience learning where they can see, touch, smell, and just dive in deep [into] it." A year-long field trip to the zoo grants kids that opportunity.

Harvey Milk High School. New York, NY. The school of safe spaces. Traci Lawson/Flickr Founded by the Hetrick-Martin Institute in 1985, Harvey Milk High is the first school designed specifically with LGBT youth in mind. In the short term, it provides a safe space to learn. In the long term, it helps at-risk youth avoid homelessness and prosper in life. According to the 2013 National School Climate Survey, over 55% of LGBT students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation. Harvey Milk has strived to change that by offering more than just education. Many students also turn to the school for food, help with job readiness, and personal health advice, which typically concerns HIV. Harvey Milk High has seen great success through its programs: In 2014, 60% of its graduating class went on to pursue advanced programs or degrees. Perhaps even more telling, the school had to implement an aging-out policy at age 21, because people loved the place so much they never wanted to leave.

P-TECH High School. Brooklyn, NY. The school that bridges high school and college. Augustus F Menezes P-TECH was launched in 2011 by IBM to give teens in New York a way into college that avoids the usual four-year high-school track. Instead, P-TECH high school students complete a six-year degree. Boosted by mentorship and internships in STEM fields, the fifth and sixth years finish with an associate's degree from the nearby New York City College of Technology, and many students go on to pursue a bachelor's degree afterward. "P-TECH is transforming high school," IBM's Stanley Litow, key architect of the P-TECH model, tells Tech Insider. The school offers students "a clear pathway from school to career, giving young people options that they could not imagine, and directly advancing the nation's economy." The first graduating class finished P-TECH in 2015 with two degrees under their belt.

AltSchool. San Francisco, CA. The school of Silicon Valley. Melia Robinson/Tech Insider AltSchool is a complete departure from traditional education, rejecting the traditional testing model for one that familiarizes kids with the latest technology so they can learn flexible thinking and adapt as the world changes. Kids turn everyday objects into circuit boards and learn 3D modeling to build playhouses, all in the pursuit of feeling comfortable with the future that greets them. "The school experience can be so much more than consumption of facts and figures," CEO Max Ventilla tells Tech Insider. "We should be educating children from a whole-child lens where they learn to problem solve, social-emotional learning is prioritized, students should be part of the goal-setting process, and so on." AltSchool is quickly growing. The school, which educates kids from ages 4 to 14, began in San Francisco in 2013 and is now expanding to Brooklyn, New York, and Palo Alto, California. In the future, AltSchool plans to go nationwide.

Big Picture Learning. Providence, RI. The school in the real world. Big Picture Learning The Big Picture Learning model breaks down the walls between education and the working world. K-12 students learn their creative passions will come first. To help stoke those passions, students are paired with mentors who work in the fields the students want to someday enter. The system is currently in place at 55 schools nationwide. "The most important element of the education at a Big Picture Learning school is that students learn in the real world," says Rodney Davis, communications director at Big Picture. To that end, each student completes an LTI, or Learning Through Internship. "The projects are connected to the student's interests and meet the needs of the mentors," Davis says, whether that involves starting a business, fixing up cars, or learning the letter of the law.

Maine High School District 207. Park Ridge, Illinois. The school in the cloud. Henry Thiele Google's efforts to revolutionize education through collaborative work are on full display in the Maine Township High School District in Park Ridge, Illinois, where cloud-based tools and internet access for kids without a hookup build schoolwide connections. "We were one of the first [schools] to deploy Chromebooks, provide Sprint hotspots to students that need Internet connectivity, and have moved more than 50% of our textbook resources to online platforms," Henry Thiele, the district's assistant superintendent for technology & learning, tells Tech Insider. "Getting collaboration to happen with high school students is really hard if they don't have the tools that make it happen, or if the tools they might naturally use aren't available," says Jonathan Rochelle, who co-founded the Google Docs suite in 2006. Both Rochelle and Thiele agree that Maine Township schools succeed because kids, parents, and teachers can easily work together,

High Tech High. San Diego, CA. The school that creates entrepreneurs. High Tech High Students lead the way at High Tech High, particularly when it comes to large-scale projects that could someday turn into viable businesses. Matt Martin, a chemistry teacher at the school, says the school places an emphasis on real-world learning because tangible skills better equip kids to navigate adulthood than memorizing facts from a textbook. The biggest project is the Wicked Soap Company, which Martin oversees. Students make real bars of soap in class and develop business plans to sell the soap to consumers. All revenue comes back to the school or gets donated to a charity of the students' choosing. "I think it prepares them to interact with adults and interact with the community," Martin tells Tech Insider. "We collaborate in real, meaningful ways."

York School. Monterey, CA. The school with 80/20 time. York School Borrowing a policy often seen in Silicon Valley, York School gives kids 80/20 time. They spend 80% of their time on schoolwork and 20% on any creative project they're interested in. The result is a learning environment where kids develop their own YouTube channels and recycling projects that push for sustainable consumerism. Kevin Brookhouser, a teacher at York School and its director of technology, says giving kids the power to be actively creative gets them to stop thinking about problem-solving in terms of equations and algorithms. Instead they think in terms of design, function, importance, and aesthetic. Recently, the school renovated its maintenance shed to become the Design Shop, a place where students can come simply to create things. "One of the things we're concerned about is the increasing level of consumption young people are experiencing," Brookhouser says. "We're rejecting that. We really want our students to be creators."