Public school choice: Implications for African American students

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 1994 by Peterkin, Robert S, Jackson, Janice E

To offer a special curricular theme or method of instruction,...[t]o attract at least some students voluntarily from outside an assigned neighborhood attendance zone entered voluntarily, and...[t]o improve desegregation by meeting specific race/ethnic goals...(cited in Steel et al., 1993, p. 4) Royster and his colleagues placed magnet themes in the following general categories: visual/perform-in-creative arts; science/mathematics/technology; career/vocational; language/humanities/multicultural; academic/honors; nontraditional; and traditional/fundamental (cited in Archbald, 1993, p. 4).

The school-within-a-school concept was developed to offset the impersonal and sometimes bureaucratic nature of large schools. In these sub-school settings, small groups of students and teachers come together to create one or more educational entities within a larger structure. These units may be thematic, autonomous, or an essential component of the larger school.

The current examination of alternative programs, magnet schools, charters, and schools-within-schools is due to their evolutionary histories as well as the recent emphasis on school choice as a political agenda. The latter issue has been heatedly debated by advocates and detractors since school choice received the endorsement of President Ronald Reagan as a response to the 1983 Nation at Risk report commissioned by the president and prepared by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The concept was also endorsed by the National Governors Association in 1986 in their report, Time for Results: The Governors' 1991 Report on Education.

In support of the choice agenda, President Reagan supported, and the Democrat-controlled Congress approved, the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) as part of Title VII of the Education for Economic Security Act (PL 93-377) in 19&Q. The program was reauthorized in 1988 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (PL 100-297). The allocation for this program grew from $70 million in 1985 to $113 million under President Bush, for a total of $739 million dollars (Steel, Levine, Rossell, & Armor, 1993). According to Archbald (1993), "In the eyes of most proponents of School Choice, Magnets deserve support because they help establish the principle of School Choice" (p. 2).

MSAP and its predecessor, the Emergency School Assistance Act (ESAA), were approved out of growing concern over the results, at times violent, of court-ordered school desegregation. Both the Reagan and Bush administrations subsequently supported magnet legislation to encourage the proliferation of voluntary desegregation plans and to reduce federal court involvement in mandatory plans such as those ordered in the 1970s. On the other hand, supporters of school desegregation and school improvement saw magnet schools as a means of eliminating past inequities, creating understanding between the races, and supporting emerging programs in multicultural education (Steel et al., 1993).

The potential of magnet schools to shape school improvement efforts contributed to their growth. This is partly because the magnet school concept evolved out of the alternative schools model of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Alternative schools were designed to provide different educational paths, curriculum, and pedagogy for students who were often disaffected from the mainstream of public education. They were characterized by teacher and student autonomy, innovative organizational structures, student and parent investment in the schools, affective and cognitive growth on the part of students, and the empowerment and development of teachers (Raywid, 1989).