Magnet school

Last updated
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, one of the highest rated magnet schools in the United States TJHSST Front.jpg
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, one of the highest rated magnet schools in the United States

In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. Normally, a student will attend an elementary school, and this also determines the middle school and high school they attend unless they move. "Magnet" refers to how magnet schools accept students from different areas, pulling students out of the normal progression of schools. Attending them is voluntary.

Contents

There are magnet schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In the United States, where education is decentralized, some magnet schools are established by school districts and draw only from the district, while others are set up by state governments and may draw from multiple districts. Other magnet programs are within comprehensive schools, as is the case with several "schools within a school". In large urban areas, several magnet schools with different specializations may be combined into a single "center," such as Skyline High School in Dallas.

Other countries have similar types of schools, such as specialist schools in the United Kingdom. Most of these are academically selective. Other schools are built around elite-sporting programs or teach agricultural skills such as farming or animal husbandry.

In 1965, then Vice President Hubert Humphrey came to John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia to declare it the first magnet school in the country. Bartram's curriculum was concentrated in the commercial field, offering commercial and business training to students from all over Philadelphia.

History

DeBakey High School for Health Professions in Houston, Texas, is a magnet school specializing in medical sciences DeBakeyHSnewbldg.jpg
DeBakey High School for Health Professions in Houston, Texas, is a magnet school specializing in medical sciences
These 2nd graders from Buchanan Math Science Magnet School in Los Angeles, work on an art project. After studying the physical environment of the planet Mars, they are now designing a suitable Martian community. Magnet2.jpg
These 2nd graders from Buchanan Math Science Magnet School in Los Angeles, work on an art project. After studying the physical environment of the planet Mars, they are now designing a suitable Martian community.

In the United States, the term "magnet school" refers to public schools with enrichment programs that are designed to attract and serve certain targeted subgroups of potential students and their families. There are two major categories of public magnet school structures in the United States, and although there is some overlap, their origins and missions remain largely distinct. The first type of magnet school is the fully competitive admissions magnet school. These schools use competitive admissions, usually rely on a standardized assessment score, and are structured to serve and support populations that are 100% gifted and/or talented students. Schools in this group generally rank among the top 100 public high schools in the United States. Examples of this type of school and program include the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, The School Without Walls in the District of Columbia, and nine schools that all use competitive admissions and are overseen by the New York City Department of Education (which still uses the older term "specialized school" instead of "magnet school" to refer to them[ citation needed ]). In addition, Chicago Public Schools uses the term "selective enrollment [1] " instead of "magnet school". Another type of "magnet school" or "magnet program" emerged in the United States in the 1970s [2] as one means of remedying racial segregation in public schools, and they were written into law in Section 5301 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Authorization. [3] Demographic trends following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court decision revealed a pattern later characterized as white flight, the hypersegregation of blacks and whites, as the latter moved to the suburbs. [4] [5] The first charter school, McCarver Elementary School, opened in Tacoma, Washington, in 1968. [6] This second type of magnet can often take the form of "a school within a school," meaning that the school may have no competitive admissions for the majority of the school population, and even the magnet program itself may not have fully competitive admissions. This is consistent with the equity-based objectives of such programs.

With the magnets designed to increase equity, at first school districts tried using involuntary plans which involved court-ordered attendance, the busing of children far from their homes, and building closer schools to achieve the required balance. [7] Later, voluntary school integration plans were developed. One approach that educators within the public school system came up with was open schools. During the Open Schools movement of the 1970s, several ideas designed to influence public education were put into practice, including Schools without Walls, Schools within a School, Multicultural Schools, Continuation Schools, Learning Centers, Fundamental Schools, and Magnet Schools. [8] "These schools were characterized by parent, student, and teacher choice, autonomy in learning and pace, non-competitive evaluation, and a child centered approach." [8] [9] Magnet schools have been the most successful of the ideas that originated from the Open Schools movement. It was expounded in 1971 by educator Nolan Estes, superintendent of Dallas Independent School District. [10] The Magnet Schools Assistance Program was developed in the early 1980s as a way to encourage schools to address de facto racial segregation. Funds were given to school districts that implemented voluntary desegregation plans or court orders to reduce racial isolation. [11]

From 1985 to 1999, a US district court judge required the state of Missouri to fund the creation of magnet schools in the Kansas City Public Schools to reverse the white flight that had afflicted the school district since the 1960s. The district's annual budget more than tripled in the process. The expenditure per pupil and the student-teacher ratio were the best of any major school district in the nation. Many high schools were given college-level facilities. Still, test scores in the magnet schools did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration. [12] Finally, on September 20, 2011, The Missouri Board of Education voted unanimously to withdraw the district's educational accreditation status from January 1, 2012. [13]

Districts started embracing the magnet school models in the hope that their geographically open admissions would end racial segregation in "good" schools and decrease de facto segregation of schools in poorer areas. To encourage the voluntary desegregation, districts started developing magnet schools to draw students to specialized schools all across their districts. Each magnet school would have a specialized curriculum that would draw students based on their interests. One of the goals of magnet schools is to eliminate, reduce, and prevent minority group isolation while providing the students with a stronger knowledge of academic subjects and vocational skills. [14] Magnet schools still continue to be models for school improvement plans and provide students with opportunities to succeed in a diverse learning environment. [15]

Within a few years, in locations such as Richmond, Virginia, additional magnet school programs for children with special talents were developed at facilities in locations that parents would have otherwise found undesirable. That effort to both attract voluntary enrollment and achieve the desired racial balance met with considerable success and helped improve the acceptance of farther distances, hardships with transportation for extracurricular activities, and the separation of siblings. Even as districts such as Richmond were released from desegregation court orders, the parental selection of magnet school programs has continued to create more racially diverse schools than would have otherwise been possible. With a wide range of magnet schools available, a suitable program could be found for more children than only the "bright" ones for whom the earliest efforts were directed.

Some 21st-century magnet schools have de-emphasized the racial integration aspects, such as Capital Prep Magnet School, a high school in Hartford, Connecticut. [16] Capital Prep, a year-round school where more than 80% of its students are black and Latino, boasts a near-0% dropout rate; 100% of its 2009 senior class was sent to a four-year college. [16] According to the school's principal, the goal is to prepare all of its students for college.

Since coming into fruition, the number of magnet schools has risen dramatically. Over 232 school districts housed magnet school programs in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, nearly 1,400 magnet schools were operating across the country. [17]

Traditionally, these magnet schools are found in neighborhoods with large minority populations. They advertise their unique educational curricula in order to attract white students who do not live in the surrounding area. In this way, the schools act as a "magnet" pulling out-of-neighborhood students that would otherwise go to a school in their traditional attendance zone. [18]

Enrollment and curriculum

Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts in Baltimore specializes in performing and visual arts, including theatre and dance and is also a Comprehensive high school Patapsco High School.gif
Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts in Baltimore specializes in performing and visual arts, including theatre and dance and is also a Comprehensive high school
Magnet schools by state .mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{} Magnet school Public charter school Private school Private EdChoice Homeschool Public school Magnet schools by state.webp
Magnet schools by state
  Magnet school
  Private EdChoice

Some magnet schools have a competitive entrance process, requiring an entrance examination, interview, or audition. Other magnet schools either select all students who apply, or use a lottery system among students who apply, while others combine elements of competitive entrance and a lottery among applicants.

Most magnet schools concentrate on a particular discipline or area of study, while others (such as International Baccalaureate schools) have a more general focus. Magnet programs may focus on academics (mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering; humanities; social sciences; fine or performing arts) or may focus on technical/vocational/agricultural education.

Access to free transportation is a key component in facilitating racial diversity in magnet schools. According to a survey distributed at the Magnet Schools of America's (MSA) 2008 annual meeting, in magnet schools with free transportation services, non-white students comprise almost 33% of the student body, which is higher than the 23% found in magnet schools without such services. Moreover, 11.9% of magnet schools that do not provide transportation are largely one-race, while only 6.4% of magnet schools with the provision of transportation are characterized as one-race schools. Such services are integral in ensuring that potential out-of-neighborhood students have access to these schools of choice. Ultimately, the presence of free transportation contributes to more integrated magnet environments. [19]

Across the country, magnet school application forms assume that its readers are proficient in reading and writing in English, understand the school's curriculum, and recognize what kinds of resources are offered to students at that respective school. In diverse urban contexts especially, these assumptions privilege some families over others. Parents who seek out magnet schools tend to be Asian, educated, middle-class, and English-fluent. Thus, in order to break down the racial disparities these schools were intended to dismantle, magnet school programs have to be intentional in not only their outreach efforts, but also how they create the application text itself. [20]

In other countries

See also

Related Research Articles

Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact on the settlement patterns of various groups. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American civil rights movement, both before and after the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, particularly desegregation of the school systems and the military. Racial integration of society was a closely related goal.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Houston Independent School District</span> Public school system in Texas

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the largest public school system in Texas, and the eighth-largest in the United States. Houston ISD serves as a community school district for most of the city of Houston and several nearby and insular municipalities in addition to some unincorporated areas. Like most districts in Texas, it is independent of the city of Houston and all other municipal and county jurisdictions. The district has its headquarters in the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center in Houston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation busing</span> Failed attempt to racially diversify American public schools

Desegregation busing was an attempt to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States by sending students to school districts other than their own. While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely racially homogeneous. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago Public Schools</span> Public school system of the municipal government of Chicago, Illinois

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), officially classified as City of Chicago School District #299 for funding and districting reasons, in Chicago, Illinois, is the fourth-largest school district in the United States, after New York, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade County. For the 2023–24 school year, CPS reported overseeing 634 schools, including 477 elementary schools and 157 high schools; of which 514 were district-run, 111 were charter schools, 7 were contract schools and 2 were SAFE schools. The district serves 323,251 students. Chicago Public School students attend a particular school based on their area of residence, except for charter, magnet, and selective enrollment schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jefferson County Public Schools (Kentucky)</span> School district in Kentucky, United States

Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) is a public school district located in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and operating all but one of the public schools in the county. It is governed by an elected seven-member Board of Education, which selects and hires a superintendent, who serves as the system's chief executive.

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc., based primarily in the metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts area, is the largest and second-longest continuously running voluntary school desegregation program in the United States. Begun in 1966, it is a national model for the few other voluntary desegregation busing programs operating in the early decades of the 21st century. The program enrolls Boston resident students in Kindergarten through 12th grade into available seats in suburban public schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Segregation academy</span> Segregationist private schools in the US

Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, and 1976, when the court ruled similarly about private schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince George's County Public Schools</span> Public school district in Prince Georges County, Maryland

Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) is a public school district that serves Prince George's County, Maryland. During the 2023–24 academic year, the district enrolled around 133,000 students and operated over 200 schools. PGCPS is the second-largest school district in Maryland, the third-largest district in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, the 18th-largest in the United States, and the nation's largest school district with a majority-black student population.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

The Cleveland School District (CSD) is a public school district based in Cleveland, Mississippi (USA).

Desegregation of the Baltimore City Public Schools took place in 1956 after the United States Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation in schools went against constitutional law. Desegregation of U.S. schools was part of the civil rights movement. The events that followed desegregation in Baltimore, were important to the civil rights movement across America. Recent scholarship has identified Baltimore's desegregation as an important precursor to the Greensboro sit-ins.

Magnet Schools Assistance is a Federal grants program administered by the U.S. Department of Education. The program is designed to help desegregate public schools. The program is defined in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, in Section 5301, though the program itself was developed in the early 1980s to address de facto racism through funds given to school distracts that were voluntarily implementing desegregation plans or court orders intended to reduce racial isolation.

Racial diversity in United States schools is the representation of different racial or ethnic groups in American schools. The institutional practice of slavery, and later segregation, in the United States prevented certain racial groups from entering the school system until midway through the 20th century, when Brown v. Board of Education forbade racially segregated education. Globalization and migrations of peoples to the United States have increasingly led to a multicultural American population, which has in turn increased classroom diversity. Nevertheless, racial separation in schools still exists today, presenting challenges for racial diversification of public education in the United States.

The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students. The call for desegregation and the first years of its implementation led to a series of racial protests and riots that brought national attention, particularly from 1974 to 1976. In response to the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate, W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city. The hard control of the desegregation plan lasted for over a decade. It influenced Boston politics and contributed to demographic shifts of Boston's school-age population, leading to a decline of public-school enrollment and white flight to the suburbs. Full control of the desegregation plan was transferred to the Boston School Committee in 1988; in 2013 the busing system was replaced by one with dramatically reduced busing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School segregation in the United States</span> Racial separation in schools

School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students in educational facilities based on their race and ethnicity. While not prohibited from having or attending schools, various minorities were barred from most schools that admitted white students. Segregation was enforced legally in the U.S. states, primarily in the Southern United States, although segregation could occur in informal settings or through social expectations and norms. Segregation laws were met with resistance by Civil Rights activists and began to be challenged in 1954 by cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court. Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School integration in the United States</span> Racial desegregation process

In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.

Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401, was a federal court case filed by civil rights activist Julius W. Hobson against Superintendent Carl F. Hansen and the District of Columbia's Board of Education on the charge that the current educational system deprived Black people and the poor of their right to equal educational opportunities relative to their white and affluent counterparts, on account of race and socioeconomic status. Having established de jure segregation unconstitutional in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), the federal court addressed questions of de facto segregation in D.C. schools, seen in the trends that survived legal desegregation, in Hobson v. Hansen. Judge J. Skelly Wright's decision, in favor of the plaintiffs, sought to remedy the re-segregation or de facto segregation enforced by the educational policies, including tracking and optional-transfer zones, adopted by the Board of Education in an attempt to accommodate the consequences of the shift to integrated schools in the aftermath of Bolling, and within the wider context of emerging racially and socioeconomically rigid residential patterns.

The Kirkwood R-7 School District is a public school district headquartered in Kirkwood, Missouri.

Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education, Trenton, NJ, 131 N.J.L. 153, 35 A.2d 622 (1944), also known as the Hedgepeth–Williams case, was a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court decision decided in 1944. The Court ruled that since racial segregation was outlawed by the New Jersey State Constitution, it was unlawful for schools to segregate or refuse admission to students on the basis of race. The case led to the formal desegregation of New Jersey public schools and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.

References

  1. ↑ "Selective Enrollment Programs". www.cps.edu. Chicago Public Schools , GoCPS. Retrieved December 25, 2024.
  2. ↑ U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, Innovations in Education: Creating Successful Magnet Schools Programs, Washington, D.C., 2004.
  3. ↑ ed.gov
  4. ↑ Charles T. Clotfelter. After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton University Press, 2004.
  5. ↑ Diane Ravitch. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 . Basic Books, 1984. p. 177.
  6. ↑ "A Brief History of Magnet Schools". magnet.edu. Retrieved 15 August 2021.
  7. ↑ Kryczka, Nicholas (February 2019). "Building a Constituency for Racial Integration: Chicago's Magnet Schools and the Prehistory of School Choice". History of Education. 59 (1): 1–34. doi: 10.1017/heq.2018.49 .
  8. 1 2 Lange, C. M. & Sletten, S. J. (2002, February). Alternative education: A brief history and research synthesis (Project FORUM). Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Directors of Special Education. Retrieved March 2, 2009, projectforum.org
  9. ↑ Lange and Sletten (2002), p. 4
  10. ↑ "Super Highs Sought: Estes Unveils Plan for Specialty Schools." The Dallas Morning News , 29 August 1971.
  11. ↑ Magnet Schools of America (2007). Magnet schools in America: A brief history. Retrieved February 20, 2009, magnet.edu Archived 2008-03-19 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ↑ Ciotti, Paul (16 March 1998). "Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment". Cato Institute. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
  13. ↑ Oberholtz, Chris. "Missouri strips Kansas City School District of accreditation". KCTV5. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
  14. ↑ U.S. Department of Education. Magnet school assistance. Retrieved February 27, 2009, ed.gov
  15. ↑ Magnet Schools of America. About MSA. Retrieved February 27, 2009, www.magnet.edu
  16. 1 2 "Principal's tough love, high expectations gets kids into college". CNN. July 22, 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-23.
  17. ↑ Goldring, Ellen; Smrekar, Claire (2002). "Magnet Schools: Reform and Race in Urban Education". The Clearing House. 76 (1): 13–15. doi:10.1080/00098650209604939. JSTOR   30189779. S2CID   144406358.
  18. ↑ Le, Chinh; Frankenberg, Erica (2008). "The Post-Parents Involved Challenge: Confronting Extralegal Obstacles to Integration". Ohio State Law Journal. 69: 1015–1072.
  19. ↑ Orfield, Gary; Frankenberg, Erica (2013). Educational Delusions? : Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair. University of California Press. p. 118. ISBN   978-0-520-27474-7. JSTOR   10.1525/j.ctt24hsqs.
  20. ↑ André-Bechely, Lois (2004). "The Goals of a Voluntary Integration Program and the Problems of Access: A Closer Look at a Magnet School Application Brochure". Equity & Excellence in Education. 37 (3): 302–315. doi:10.1080/10665680490500370. S2CID   144204231.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.