Historically, debates about educational choice have wrestled with big, unresolved tensions that lie at the heart of American life, having to do with individual rights, community obligations, public and private interests, religious freedoms, and more. But in recent years, school reformers have tended to talk about choice as though it referred only…

Sixty-five years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and judicial role in school desegregation has declined. In a more difficult political and legal environment, it has fallen on school districts to develop and implement voluntary integration plans through diversity-minded student assignment…

The Illinois state superintendent of education offers his "dream" about the way Chicago integrated its schools. (IRT)

Describes mainstreaming at the Dowling Urban Environment Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota--a fully inclusive, racially mixed, K-6 magnet school that is expensive but well worth the cost. This school has a clear purpose, few signs of emotional exhaustion among staff, and little depersonalization. Dowling's ambience is in marked contrast to…

Reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the Boston magnet school program. The author concludes that integration in the 1980s will need to be metropolitan and voluntary. (Author/IRT)

Achievement tests and the parents of the students involved both indicate that the Phillips Extended Day Magnet School in Raleigh, North Carolina, provides an effective program for the students enrolled. The school offers programs from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. (IRT)

Parent and community participation in an exciting magnet program has allowed Tucson (Arizona) to desegregate its school system without an undue amount of disruption. (Author)

The operation of a "Walkabout" program at a large urban magnet school is reviewed. After frequent exposure to supervised community experiences in regular humanities courses students may undertake independent, semester-long Walkabout projects, usually career-oriented. (MJL)

Describes the evolution of a microsociety school in Lowell, Massachusetts. Guided by teachers, students use money, markets, and property building blocks to create a microeconomy producing numerous organizations and jobs. Lacking a prescribed ideological path (or a prepackaged curriculum), the students fashion their own social system and guiding…

To provide a school choice program for purely political reasons is reprehensible. The St. Louis (Missouri) model, based on a court-approved desegregation settlement, has demonstrated that citizen commitment and adequate funding can create a successful, equitable program. (MLH)

There is no one "best" educational system, purports the author. Magnet schools offer choice and a powerful tool for educational change. Research findings about magnet schools are presented. (MD)

Focuses on identifying policies and practices that may have been crucial to successful implementation of the Houston plan or may have contributed notably to it, and describes several interrelated issues in urban education raised in the course of establishing the magnet school program. (Author/IRT)

Describes the origins of alternative schools within U. S. public school systems and the reasons for their rapid proliferation. (Author/WD)

Paul Ciotti's monograph "Money and School Performance" exposing the "desegregation debacle" in Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is an improperly aimed salvo in the "money matters" debate. Actually, money should not be thrown at politically dysfunctional schools with incompetent teachers, administrators, and board…

Durham (North Carolina) School of the Arts' transformation in 5 years from a run-down, segregated facility to a highly desirable magnet school is proof that a school accessible to the whole community can succeed. Students are chosen by lottery and are showing appreciable academic growth on state tests. (MLH)