A magnet school has four essential ingredients: a distinctive curriculum; a unique district purpose for voluntary desegregation; an opportunity for school choice; and access to students beyond a district attendance zone. Most magnet schools have one of five types of curricular themes: the fine, applied, or performing arts; the sciences; social…

Compares the public-choice model for school desegregation, which involves parents choosing magnet schools, to the command-and-control model, which involves mandatory reassignment plans, in order to evaluate the desegregation effectiveness of each plan. The public-choice model works for school desegregation. Mandatory reassignment produces more…

This report assesses the relative effectiveness of primarily voluntary and primarily mandatory desegregation plans in a sub-sample of 20 school districts, 9 of which are magnet-voluntary plans and 11 of which are magnet-mandatory plans. The major conclusions of this report are the following: (1) voluntary desegregation plans work; (2) dismantling…

Examines whether controlled choice is a superior desegregation tool for urban schools. A study of 20 school districts with minority populations above 30% revealed controlled choice to be as unpopular as mandatory reassignments, to produce greater white flight than magnet-voluntary plans, and to offer less interracial exposure than do voluntary…

A careful review of the literature and an examination of desegregation programs in Los Angeles, show that the claim that voluntary programs produce almost no desegregation, and certainly less than mandatory programs, is open to question. Most comparisons between voluntary and mandatory programs have been between cities and have not taken into…

This paper discusses how trends in school racial desegregation suggest a move back toward segregation. Courts are more willing now to attribute these patterns of racial segregation to demographic changes in residential housing markets rather than to past vestiges of the segregated system as they had done in the past. School officials and community…

Magnet school programs require careful planning. Originally designed to achieve voluntary desegregation, magnet programs attract students of all races and backgrounds by offering special curricular themes and instructional approaches not offered in neighborhood schools. Outcomes of a successful program include the following: (1) desegregation; (2)…