El Goonish ShiVe: Look! Squirrel!

[mucat]

There are also public high schools that specialize heavily in certain areas, though they still expect their students to take a full standard high school curriculum. Bronx School of Science, San Francisco School of the Arts, Brooklyn Latin (specializing in the classics). Essentially, the idea is that "You will study everything a normal high school student would study, and then in THIS area, you will go way beyond that."

Also, to avoid confusion, in the U.S., "public" means a state-funded and regulated school, "private" means a non-state-funded, more loosely regulated one where students either pay (often heavy) tuition or attend on scholarships. I understand that in the UK, and perhaps other places, the terms are used pretty much the opposite way around.