Educational Delusions?: Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair

5. Designing Choice: Magnet School Structures and Racial Diversity

107 Magnet schools represent the first mainstream policy effort to combine school choice with the pursuit of racial diversity.1 During the 1970s, as urban districts around the country grappled with the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education’s mandate, pioneering educators in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and other communities sought to create educationally distinctive schools that would produce significant voluntary desegregation. When magnets first emerged as a major model of choice, almost all were designed as part of desegregation plans. Most of the start-up costs were thus funded through desegregation court orders or special federal desegregation aid money. today, the unique features of magnet programs (such as innovative curricula and teaching methods) continue to attract a wide, diverse group of families across traditional attendance zones to schools typically located in urban cores. to ensure that all families have access to magnet programs, many also offer important civil rights protections, including open enrollment, outreach, and transportation.2 Fundamental to the design of magnet schools is, of course, the fact that both students and teachers choose to learn and work within them. They are the largest set of schools of choice today. Over the years, magnets have played a role in both furthering integration efforts and fostering the growth of public school choice. yet after 1991, when the supreme Court began to reverse desegregation policy and as charter schools made their debut as a choice framework, attention began to turn away from magnet schools—and many magnet schools began to turn away from desegregation goals.3 nonetheless, they have been an extremely important experiment in urban desegregation strategy, and their accomplishments deserve close attention. today the term magnet school encompasses a wide variety of educational 5 Designing Choice Magnet School Structures and Racial Diversity Genevieve siegel-Hawley and Erica Frankenberg 108 Siegel-Hawley and Frankenberg settings. Beyond two broad, general characteristics—the provision of something that is educationally unique from what other public schools offer and a nonreliance on traditional attendance zones—magnet programs have considerably different designs.4 The sector includes whole-school programs, smaller magnets housed within a host school, magnets with competitive or noncompetitive entrance requirements, and magnets with or without racial diversity guidelines. This varied group of schools can thus give important insight into the conditions and structures that promote diversity within educational choice systems. recognizing their different contexts and conditions, this chapter seeks to develop a deeper understanding of contemporary magnet school trends. We look specifically at the characteristics of student enrollment to understand whether magnets are more or less racially, socioeconomically, or linguistically diverse than regular public schools and charter schools. This chapter also draws upon two surveys of magnet schools to describe the relationship between the racial composition and the design and structure of these programs. We find that certain characteristics , such as the presence of desegregation goals or the provision of free transportation , are associated with more integrated magnet environments and higher levels of parent demand. We argue that magnet programs, when carefully designed, continue to offer a critical example of school choice used to promote diversity. tHE BACKGrOUnD AnD COntEXt OF MAGnEt sCHOOls in 1976, Congress amended the Emergency school Aid Act (EsAA) by initiating a federal grant program, known as the Magnet schools Assistance Program (MsAP), for districts interested in opening magnet schools to further desegregation goals.5 One year later, on the heels of several extensive court-ordered desegregation plans, Congress passed an amendment placing severe restrictions on federal agencies’ ability to prescribe busing as a remedy for segregation.6 This action, compounded by the supreme Court’s 1974 retreat from authorizing comprehensive city-suburban desegregation, prompted liberal factions to support magnet schools as one of the few remaining desegregation strategies that appeared politically viable.7 Progressive magnet supporters were also joined by many conservatives, including President ronald reagan, who touted the virtues of school choice—in part because of the market-based implications of offering alternatives to public schools.8 Following their inception, magnet schools rapidly multiplied. in the early 1990s more than 232 school districts contained magnet schools.9 A decade later the U.s. Department of Education (ED) estimated that more than half of all large urban school systems had used or continued to use magnets as a tool for desegregation.10 Designing Choice 109 The Shifting Purpose of Magnet Schools ED has conducted three broad reviews of magnet programs established with the help...