Magnet Schools

This article examines the origins of magnet schools in public education, and gives a brief history of the major events and court cases that shaped the magnet school concept. After an overview further describing magnet school systems, and a brief summary using current magnet school statistics, the article develops a central idea that the social context and public perception of magnet schools has changed over time. This idea is explored to uncover the past and present contexts for public magnet schools so as to compare the values and objectives from their inception. The article then examines an important Supreme Court decision that will inevitably change the social and racial makeup of magnet schools, and explores the legal and social ramifications of that Supreme Court decision.

Alternative Education > Magnet Schools Keywords Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; Busing; De Facto Segregation; De Jure Segregation; Desegregation; Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA); Magnet Schools; Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP); Re-segregation; Parents v. Seattle; Separate but Equal Doctrine; White Flight

Magnet Schools: De Jure Success / De Facto Failure?

History of Magnet School Development

Magnet schools were originally created to offer an alternative for racially integrating the nation's public school system. Before magnet schools, the most common method for creating racial diversity in public school districts was to assign students to attend specific schools, or to bus students to more distant schools. The term "magnet" came into common usage in the 1970's when policymakers - whose primary intention was to desegregate schools - created specialized, high-quality education programs in an effort to make inner city schools more attractive to parents, educators and students. Magnet schools were established to "promote racial diversity, improve scholastic standards, and provide a range of programs to satisfy individual talents and interests" (Goldring & Smrekar, 2002, p 1).

Essentially, magnet schools evolved as a creative solution to fulfill the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which overturned the previous "separate but equal" doctrine that the Supreme Court had announced in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The Brown Supreme Court decision, written in 1954, states,

The Fourteenth Amendment

The relevant part of the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution asserts, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Relating to this, the federal court decisions from Brown up to the present have followed the precedent of making a legal distinction between a school segregated by laws or official policies (known as "de jure" segregation) and a school segregated because of individual choices or social practices - known as "de facto" segregation (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003, p. 32). The most recent Supreme Court decision that pertains to school districts and magnet schools (a decision reached June 28, 2007 - and discussed more fully below) also uses the de jure / de facto legal precedence.

At the time of the Brown decision, and for over a decade thereafter, segregation was explicit in the constitutions of several U.S. states, and such de jure segregation was also contained in the ordinances of some northern and western school districts. De jure laws and ordinances affecting public education were forced by court order to be deracinated from all legal codes, and those school districts that had created de jure systems of segregation were ordered to desegregate and find a way to make racially integrated schools. Thus, the Brown Supreme Court decision initiated a long period of public school desegregation via a string of closely-related lawsuits and federal court orders. Over the course of resolving yet other Supreme Court decisions, as well as other specific federal court orders in several states, it became apparent that magnet schools were the best means to increase white student enrollment in predominantly black schools, and black student enrollment in predominantly white schools (Arcia, 2004, p. 2).

Birth Of Magnet Schools

Magnet schools came into existence only after other trials and experiments in desegregation encountered too much resistance, were stopped by court decisions, or outright failed. After the Brown decision, most communities and their public school systems did very little to redress their segregated status quos, which led to the 1968 Supreme Court case Green v. County School Board, Va., wherein that state's "freedom of choice" plan was declared unacceptable because the "freedom of choice" strategy did not produce school desegregation. The decision included some truly startling facts: "During the [freedom of choice] plan's three years of operation, no white student has chosen to attend the all-Negro school, and although 115 Negro pupils enrolled in the formerly all-white school, 85% of the Negro students in the system still attend the all-Negro school" (Green v. County, 1968, p 1).

After the Green decision, federal courts began to order more extreme remedies for desegregation, culminating in the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision, which led school districts to commonly use busing to end segregation. Congress subsequently supported the Swann decision with its 1972 Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA), which provided federal aid to those school districts actively endeavoring to desegregate their schools. However, there was strong resistance to "forced busing." For example, an angry mob of white parents stoned school buses carrying black children in Boston, Massachusetts, while others bombed buses carrying black children in Pontiac, Michigan (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003, p. 33), and although extreme violence was isolated, strong social resistance was pervasive.

The 1972 ESAA was actually the impetus for magnet schools as this Act provided funds for the development of magnet schools. Its authors envisioned that through voluntary enrollment the schools would create racial balance; the concept is much the same as the previous "freedom of choice" plan, except with some additional benefits to make the choice more attractive - like a magnet. This was the period when “magnet programs and schools were placed in predominantly black neighborhoods to attract white students,” and vice versa. Magnet schools were also intended to raise educational achievement and to offer comprehensive specialized programs in humanities and sciences, e.g. theater, dance, biotechnology, communications, and language (Arcia, 2004, p. 3).

Once initiated by the ESAA, magnet schools quickly increased as a means of desegregation- particularly after the 1974 Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, which arose to remedy Detroit, Michigan's mostly black school district. A lower court had attempted to create a solution that would mix the masses of African American children in the inner city with those in the largely white suburbs, but the Supreme Court declared that suburbs could not be forced to participate unless "racially discriminatory acts of the state or local school districts … have been a substantial cause of interdistrict segregation" (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003, p. 34). If a city had become segregated from actions taken or policies created by its own school board (which was the case with Detroit), then the city had to solve its own segregation problems within its own borders without mandating suburban school district participation.

Milliken v. Bradley consequently opened the door for a phenomenon known as "white flight," and also marked a constitutional limit in America's efforts to integrate its schools. After the Milliken v. Bradley verdict, high-income and middle-class white parents made an exodus out of the inner cities of America and created the nation's enormous number of suburbs - accompanied by predominantly white school districts. Other affluent families abandoned the public schooling system altogether and began sending their children to private schools ('Still separate," 2007, p 12). After 1974 and the sudden end to busing - along with yet another Supreme Court decision, the 1975 Morgan v. Kerrigan case - in which federal courts affirmed that magnet schools were a legally sound method of desegregation - magnet schools became the most feasible option for desegregating the nation's public school system.

The Magnet System

The federal magnet program even survived the later elimination of the Emergency School Aid Act that had originally created the program. “Since 1985, support for schools has been provided through MSAP, the federally funded Magnet Schools Assistance Program” (Arcia, 2004, p. 3). By the 1991-92 school year, “more than 1.2 million students were enrolled in magnet schools in 230 school districts, and during the 1999-2000 school year there were more than 1,372 magnet schools across the United States” (Goldring & Smrekar, 2002, p 2). Magnet schools are typically established in urban school districts where student enrollment exceeds 10,000. Based on U.S. Department of Education statistics, “53 percent of large urban districts include magnet school programs as part of their desegregation plans, as compared with only 10 percent of suburban districts” (Goldring & Smrekar, 2002, p 3). Magnet school programs are extremely popular, as measured by the fact that the request for student enrollment in over 75 percent of all districts with magnets is greater than school capacity, and half of these districts maintain long waiting lists (Goldring & Smrekar, 2002, p 4).

Over the years, districts have supported magnet schools with large investments of their resources. On average, expenditures per student are “10 percent higher” in districts that have developed magnet programs, and

Changing Social Context

Even as magnet schools were spreading, they were apparently transforming and moving away from their original, fundamental purpose of desegregating public schools - which, whether segregation is categorized as de jure or de facto, creates the exact same social problem. The question of whether the social context has changed for magnet schools is important, and some have found answers based on research and solid arguments. An interesting sociological analysis of Los Angeles media clearly demonstrates this shift over the course of the last few decades. R.M. Straus asks a question about magnet schools that seems to have been overlooked by many academicians, legislators, and other public leaders: "Did the social construction of LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] magnet schools change from 1976 to 1999?" (Straus, 2004, p. 100). Strauss analyzed hundreds of news articles and found a very clear pattern that indicated a shift in social context for magnet schools.

In the 1970's when magnet schools were initiated in Los Angeles, all of the news articles strongly tied them to attempts to desegregate and racially integrate the school system, but already in the 1980's articles about magnet schools "rarely mentioned any type of desegregation program" except for a few that briefly noted desegregation for historical reasons (Straus, 2004, p. 114). Through examining the content of 1980's articles, Straus then persuasively posits that by the end of the 1980's a change has occurred in public perception of magnet schools; magnet schools transitioned into "a benefit for the (predominantly White) middle class rather than for racial minorities" (Straus, 2004, p. 117). By the 1990's, and up until the present, magnet schools have continued this change in social context, and magnet schools are currently discussed and considered mostly in terms of "standards, curriculum, and honors-winning students" (Straus, 2004, p. 118).

According to Straus and others, magnet schools and their race-based admissions policies have ceased representing a legally acceptable instrument for creating a racially diverse school system. However, the U.S. Department of Education describes its magnet school funding program thus: "These grants assist in the desegregation of public schools by supporting the elimination, reduction, and prevention of minority group isolation in elementary and secondary schools with substantial numbers of minority group students" ("Magnet School Assistance Program," p 1). Yet much of the political, legislative, executive and judicial context surrounding magnet schools actually points in the same direction that Straus claims California's local government, media and public has taken their magnet schools. The second half of what comprises the U.S. Department of Education's description of magnet schools sounds very similar to what Straus posits: "[Magnet School] Projects support the development and design of innovative education methods and practices that promote diversity and increase choices in public education programs" ("Magnet School Assistance Program," p 1). Related to the change of context that Straus observes, the U.S. Department of Education's magnet school description uses the word "diversity" without the word "racial" in front of it, and seems to be referring to a more general meaning for diversity, possibly even diversity of educational programs and choices. The word "diversity" was formerly collocated exclusively with "racial" so as to express the idea of racial integration, and "choice" originally possessed a context describing the 1968 Supreme Court Green decision, wherein the Virginia County School Board's "freedom of choice" plan was struck down for failing to achieve racial integration.

If we read much of the information, news, opinions, and academic material regarding magnet schools, the transformed language and meaning surrounding magnet schools becomes clearer. Rather than the goal of racial diversity, magnet schools - and public education in general - increasingly describe goals that sound much more like those belonging to open-market businesses endeavoring to serve and satisfy an affluent clientele of finicky customers. Even a large portion of the nation's academic community often use this new language and propagate what other academicians and public leaders argue is a new and popular concept for magnet schools and public schooling:

It seems Goldring and Smrekar are simply summarizing a popular and thoroughly entrenched viewpoint that many public leaders espouse. They seem to recognize the significance of the change that Straus has also noted above, and they later speak of what this change of perception might signal; also, they point out the need for thinking upon what "choice" means. In the following quote, once again the word "racial" is not collocated with the word "diversity," "unencumbered choice" seems very similar to "freedom of choice," which ironically hearkens back to Green, and "parental privilege" has usurped the original idea of offering privileges to racially isolated students:

With a chorus of city mayors, from Austin and Seattle, to Boston and Nashville, calling for a return to "neighborhood schools," the ideal of diversity anchored to magnet schools may well be subjugated to an ideal of unencumbered choice and parental privilege in public education. These trends signal the need for a better understanding of new policies on race and magnet schools; the social and political context of choice; and the consequences of these reform strategies for school systems in urban America and for the lives of educators, students, and their families (Goldring & Smrekar, 2002, p 20).

Although the goal of "empowerment of teachers and principals to transform their schools" sounds like a worthy objective, if this objective has overshadowed or replaced the objective of racially balancing schools, as Straus and others suggest, then this deserves conscious consideration by parents and school districts. Perhaps these objectives can still be achieved while keeping racial integration as a top priority, and certainly we should ask whether this new direction is at the expense of turning away from what may have been, for the nation, superior goals of the past. This also poses the question whether academicians and public leaders have kept in mind the primary objective of magnet schools, or have gradually adopted meanings, definitions and contexts that serve a privileged establishment to neglect those important social responsibilities out of which magnet schools arose in the first place - which is the primary argument that Straus presents as a conclusion to his research.

Viewpoints: Recent Landmark Decision

The idea that definitions, context and meaning have eroded from the original intent of Brown and, later, from the original purpose of magnet schools, was also pointed out by one of the dissenting judges in the June 28, 2007 Supreme Court decision, Parents involved in community schools v. Seattle school district No. 1 et al. This decision addressed two lawsuits in two school districts, one in Seattle, Washington and the other in Louisville, Kentucky, where the districts were using race-conscious admissions criterion (along with other criteria) in an effort to maintain and further enhance racial diversity in the districts' magnet schools. The parents sued the districts for making race-based enrollment decisions, and the Supreme Court concurred (by a narrow, 5-4 consensus) with the parents' petition. This decision has in effect cancelled any school district's plans for admitting or denying magnet school students based on race.

Message to Parents & Students

Thus, the U.S. government has a contradictory, or at the very least mixed, message to parents and students. The Department of Education emphasizes funding magnet schools in order to assist in desegregation and decrease racial isolation, but public schools have been federally censured from making enrollment decisions based on a student's race. Some of the dissenting Supreme Court Justices think this case was pivotal in continuing or abandoning public school efforts to promote racially balanced schools. In his dissenting opinion, the honorable Judge Stevens points out the reversal of intents, contexts and meanings that have transformed magnet schools. Their original purpose has been rewritten to create the new social context of "parental privilege" and "school choice." Justice Stevens' point is as follows:

An even stronger statement came from Justice Breyer, who concluded his dissenting opinion by saying, "This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret" (Parents v. Seattle, 2007, p. 176). He also included some revealing statistics that clearly demonstrate a need for including race in the admissions policies of magnet schools. He noted that, from 2002 statistics, almost 2.4 million students, or over 5% of all public school enrollment, attended schools with a white population of less than 1%. Of these, 2.3 million were nonwhite students, and only 72,000 were white, meaning there are many urban schools that are even now extremely racially isolated, and magnet schools have good reason to use race for trying to balance this situation. Justice Breyer also points out the problem of emphasizing de jure legal arguments to ignore de facto segregation: "In light of the evident risk of a return to school systems that are in fact (though not in law) resegregated, many school districts have felt a need to maintain or to extend their integration efforts" (Parents v. Seattle, 2007, p. 176).

What Justice Breyer believes is one of the fundamental errors in this Supreme Court decision is that, in all past court cases, the de jure/de facto distinction was only used to interpret what the U.S. Constitution mandates school districts to do, but such legal distinctions were never used to say what the Constitution permits them to do in order to integrate their schools. As Judge Breyer put it, "No case of this Court has ever relied upon the de jure / de facto distinction in order to limit what a school district is voluntarily allowed to do. That is what is at issue here" (Parents v. Seattle, 2007, p. 152). According to Justice Breyer, the decision maintained that the underlying school district plans were unconstitutional, and this will create an unraveling effect. First of all, it means Seattle's earlier (even more race-conscious) plans were necessarily unconstitutional, and it also means that the decision will require the removal of the laws of several states and many local communities. Justice Breyer best explains the far-reaching consequences of the Parents v. Seattle decision:

Essentially, the court decision went a long way toward reversing the opinion on the constitutionality of racial integration methods and plans that had been used over the last half century in public school districts throughout the nation. This Supreme Court decision also completed the transformation of magnet schools from a practical desegregation tool for racially isolated minority students to a market oriented system with superior specialized programs to advance suburbia's best and brightest.

The School Choice Movement

In the post-Parents v. Seattle era, students and parents are often surprised to discover that magnet schools originated from desegregation attempts. As public schools nationwide faced stressors on many fronts, the role of magnet schools expanded as one feasible and funded alternative to the traditional school model.

Historically, magnet school systems had delivered positive results. According to many researchers, African Americans gained most when they participated in metropolitan plans that involved a city and its surrounding suburbs. Racially isolated minority students gained most when they were desegregated in the early grades, and when they formed about a quarter to a third of a school's enrollment; also, those who attended a school in wealthier districts did better than those who moved within their own or similarly poor districts (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003, p. 39). Though public school districts could no longer try to racially balance the composition of their magnet school enrollments through race-based admission policies, other criteria and strategies could be used to achieve diversity, for example, by creating a magnet school in a minority neighborhood as a feeder school to a high performing middle or high school with a predominantly White student body. Interdistrict magnet schools may enroll students across district lines to achieve diversity where districts are demographically homogeneous. Another strategy, used by the Chicago district to arrive at a mix of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, relies on census factors such as primary language, family income, home ownership, and parental educational attainment (Fleming, 2012).

By and large, however, magnet schools came to be seen as a cure for low performance rather than as a means of desegretation. As standardized testing revealed shortcomings in the performance of U.S. public schools, especially those in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, calls for more "school choice" came from parents and politicians. Conversion to the magnet school model was seen as a way to change the local perception of troubled schools, institute reforms at a school site, and receive additional funding. Differentiating a magnet school from other district schools often involved adoption of an academic focus, such as math or performing arts, and admission requirements often included indications of exceptional academic abilities. Thus, while many districts continued to use a blind lottery system for selecting qualified applicants, many magnet schools moved to eliminate from the application pool students who were less likely to attain a high level of academic performance.

Terms & Concepts

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: This landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954 overturned an earlier ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and declared the establishment by any law of separate public schools for black and white students as “inherently unequal.”

Busing: The practice of transporting children to specific schools outside their residential neighborhoods in an effort to counteract discriminatory school district designations.

De Facto Segregation: A legal expression that means "in fact" or "in practice" but not spelled out by law.

De Jure Segregation: A legal expression that means "based on law," de jure is also translated as "by law" and has a very similar meaning to "in principle."

Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA): A Congressional Act passed in 1970 that was designed to help overcome the adverse effects of racial isolation, and to help attain the positive benefits of integrated education. It was concerned not with the long range, broad educational matters as a whole, but rather with the special and immediate needs of desegregation.

Magnet Schools: A public school which offers specialized courses or curricula, originally with the intent to address the problem of desegregation by attracting students of different races to the magnet school.

Parents v. Seattle: A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, reached in June, 2007, that prohibits the consideration of race as a deciding factor in admissions to schools in order to integrate public schools, ignoring racial balancing as a compelling state interest.

Resegregation: Characterized by schools that had successfully undergone de jure and de facto desegregation gradually returning to de facto segregation once a school district's racial balancing policies are removed.

Segregation: A policy of separating different races in daily life, such as in restaurant seating, drinking from a water fountain, rest rooms, or public schools. Segregation may be de jure or de facto.

Separate but Equal Doctrine: A legal argument that originated in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896. It declared that the establishment by state law of separate systems (this case was about separate railroad transportation) for black and white Americans is legal.

White Flight: Describes a demographic trend in which working- and middle-class white people move out of racially mixed inner-city neighborhoods to live in predominantly white suburbs. This is often in response to previously all white neighborhoods becoming gradually more racially mixed.

Bibliography

Arcia, E. (2006). Comparison of the enrollment percentages of magnet and non-magnet schools in a large urban school district. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 14 , 1-16. Retrieved July 5, 2007, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v14n33/

Bifulco, R., Buerger, C., & Cobb, C. (2012). Intergroup relations in integrated schools: A glimpse inside interdistrict magnet schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 20, 1-27. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=84358828&site=ehost-live

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (No. 1.). Retrieved July 8, 2007, from Cornell University Law School Supreme Court Collection http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZS.html

Fleming, N. (2012). Magnets adjust to new climate of school choice. Education Week, 31, 1-17. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=75173207&site=ehost-live

Goldring, E. & Smrekar, C. (2002). Magnet schools reform and race in urban education. Clearing House, 76 , 13-15. Retrieved July 5, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=7520192&site=ehost-live

Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430. (May, 1968). Supreme Court brief no. 695. Retrieved July 9, 2007, from http://supreme.justia.com/us/391/430/case.html

Hochschild, J. & Scovronick, N. (2003). American Dream & the Public Schools. New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved July 5, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=17972621&site=ehost-live

Parents involved in community schools v. Seattle school district No. 1 et al. Supreme Court opinion syllabus. (2007). Retrieved July 7, 2007, from http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-908.pdf

Still separate after all these years. (2007). Economist, 383 (8526) 31-32. Retrieved July 7, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24886954&site=ehost-live

Straus, R.M. (2004). Reconstructing Los Angeles magnet schools: Representation in newspapers. Peabody Journal of Education, 79 , 98-121. Retrieved July 9, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12732228&site=ehost-live

Taggart, A., & Shoho, A.R. (2013). Attracting diverse students to a magnet school: Risking aspirations or swallowing one’s beliefs. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 16, 20-32. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=87693688&site=ehost-live

U.S. Department of Education. (2007) Magnet School Assistance Program. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.ed.gov/programs/magnet/index.html.

Suggested Reading

Carey, K.D. (2006). Planning for equity. American School Board Journal, 193 53-57. Retrieved July 6, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=20018847&site=ehost-live

Gewertz, C. (2003) Tulsa to change admissions to magnet schools. Education Week, 23 . Retrieved July 6, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=11618007&site=ehost-live

Trotter, A. (2006). End near for Chicago desegregation decree. Education Week, 25 , 5-14. Retrieved July 8, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=21142718&site=ehost-live

Stover, D. (2007). Moment of truth. American School Board Journal, 194 , 23-27. Retrieved July 5, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=24358364&site=ehost-live