Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Innovation / Education

None

How Do You Get Poor Kids to Apply to Great Colleges?

Caroline Hoxby and her team of researchers are revolutionizing the way the best colleges reach out to talented low-income students

Art Meets Science

Should We Use Body Painting to Teach Anatomy?

Artist Danny Quirk’s paintings on the skin of willing friends show in textbook-like detail the muscle, bone and tissue that lie underneath

Can cameras read what’s going on in a second grader’s mind?

Can Facial Recognition Really Tell If a Kid Is Learning in Class?

Inventors of software called EngageSense say you can tell if kids are engaged in class by analyzing their eye movements

Will This $15 Device Protect Against School Shootings?

High school students in Washington D.C. have designed the DeadStop, a simple attachment that instantly locks armed intruders out of classrooms

The Common Core State Standards is a new initiative that outlines literacy and mathematics expectations for K-12 schools across the country.

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

What to Make of the Debate Over Common Core

Across 45 states and the District of Columbia, teachers are working off the same set of standards. What makes that so controversial?

None

Powering the 21st Century

To Develop Tomorrow’s Engineers, Start Before They Can Tie Their Shoes

The Ramps and Pathways program encourages students to think like engineers before they’ve reached double digits

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

The Rise of Blended Learning

How a new trend in education rethinks the role of computers in the classroom and lets each student learn at a different pace

None

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

The Scientist Comes to the Classroom

Partnerships that pair schools and working scientists are helping kids think about science—and science careers—in ways they never imagined

edX founder Anant Agarwal creates a tablet-based lecture.

Powering the 21st Century

The Path to Being a Scientist Doesn’t Have to Be So Narrow

A radical new college model could change the rigged obstacle course of the world’s education system, expanding opportunity for millions of students

Writing code is similar to giving commands, says one software engineer to his young students. “The computer can’t know what you don’t tell it.”

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

Is Coding the New Second Language?

Kids may know their way around a computer, but in order to get a job in the new economy, they will have to know how to write a program, not just use one

Many Americans think U.S. teens perform even worse on standardized science tests than they actually do, according to a new national survey.

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

How Much Do Americans Know About Science?

An exclusive poll shows Americans crave stronger mathematics, science schooling for U.S. kids

Follow the path from school to the workplace to see what sticking with STEM will do for a career

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

Infographic: Where a STEM Education Can Take You

Follow the path from school to the workplace to see what sticking with STEM will do for a career

None

Where Are the Centers for Education Innovation?

Look at a state-by-state comparison of where STEM and charter schools can be found around the country

None

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

The Very Model of a Modern Major STEM School

As science and math-focused campuses multiply around the country, Denver’s School of Science and Technology is deciding what makes a STEM school great

None

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

How to Count to 100,000 STEM Teachers in 10 Years

Talia Milgrom-Elcott is building a coalition of the willing, an army devoted to bringing thousands of educators to the classroom

Technician Maggie Halloran explains to a group of high school students how DNA sequencing works at the National Museum of Natural History’s new Laboratories of Analytical Biology (LAB), a molecular biotechnology hub.

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

How Museums Are Fostering the Workforce of the Future

The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum gives high school students an inside look at collections, labs and the people who run them

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

The 10 Worst Teachers and Principals From Pop Culture

From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to Mean Girls, on-screen educators have a talent for causing trouble. Here are the worst offenders.

Industrialist Andrew Carnegie (front row, center) financially supported the Tuskegee Institute and its faculty members, pictured here. Carnegie lauded the efforts of Booker T. Washington, who opened the school in 1881, shown here with his wife Margaret next to the businessman.

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

The Business of American Business Is Education

From corporate donations to workplace restrictions, what’s taught in the classroom has always been influenced by American industry

None

Educating Americans for the 21st Century

Document Deep Dive: What Was on the First SAT?

Explore the exam that has been stressing out college-bound high school students since 1926

Page 13 of 14