A desegregation tool that backfired: magnet schools and classroom segregation.

• Author: West, Kimberly C.

Magnet schools--schools offering a special curriculum and capable of attracting students of different racial backgrounds--are often touted as one of the most effective desegregation tools available. How often racial segregation occurs within such schools, however, is rarely discussed. In a successfully desegregated school, we expect to see children of various races and ethnicities learning together in the same classroom. Yet, many supposedly desegregated magnet schools operate racially segregated classrooms.(1) By definition, it is paradoxical to attach the label "desegregated" to a magnet school that operates segregated classrooms. Nevertheless, the commonly accepted definition of desegregation permits a magnet school with racially segregated classrooms to be deemed desegregated.

This Note argues that courts assessing the desegregation effectiveness of magnet schools should evaluate the desegregation of classrooms as well as buildings. Part I, after describing magnet schools and their role in the desegregation of school systems, presents support for the claim that many magnet schools are rife with racially segregated classrooms. Racial segregation within partial-site(2) magnet schools is particularly damaging to the minority students who constitute the nonmagnet portion of the school, because it labels them as inferior to the white transfer students who constitute the bulk of the magnet students within the school. Part Il explains how the methods developed by academics to evaluate desegregation plans have made it possible for magnet schools to operate separate classrooms for minority and white students, yet still be considered desegregated schools. Part Ill describes constitutional prohibitions against racial segregation within magnet schools, but notes that federal funding programs for desegregation-oriented magnet schools do not explicitly require the Department of Education to consider how the magnet program will affect classroom racial composition. Pan IV discusses the declining number of school desegregation cases in which the court explicitly considers within-school racial segregation. The failure of courts over the last several decades to consider classroom racial composition has resulted in desegregation plans centered around magnet schools that merely shift racial segregation from the building to the classroom level. Part IV concludes that courts should pay particular attention to classroom racial composition as they fashion equitable remedies to school segregation.

1. CLASSROOM SEGREGATION IN MAGNET SCHOOLS

   This Note maintains that some magnet schools, especially those structured as "partial-site" magnet schools, operate segregated classrooms. This proposition is supported by accounts of classroom segregation reported in academic literature and in the popular press(3) and by individuals who have surveyed magnet schools across the country.(4) This Part describes how partial-site magnet schools invariably assign their nonmagnet nontransfer (neighborhood) students to racially identifiable classrooms; how the type of magnet school included in court-ordered desegregation plans is usually of the partial-site variety; and how the fact that magnets are obliged to attract their students may lead officials administering magnet schools to implement policies which cause classroom segregation. This segregation has lead to a horrible irony: desegregation-oriented magnet schools have placed an explicit label of inferiority on the minority children they were designed to relieve.

   1. Magnet Schools and Their Role in Desegregation

      A "magnet school" is designed to attract students away from their neighborhood schools much as magnets attract metal objects. A distinctive school curriculum organized around a special theme or method of instruction creates the magnetic field that draws students.(5) As originally conceived, magnet schools were designed to accomplish two ends: (1) to enhance students' academic performance through a distinctive curriculum and (2) to enhance the school's racial and social diversity.(6) Courts order the creation of magnet schools and districts implement them because magnet schools are perceived as capable of furthering the dual goals of desegregation and educational innovation. Magnet schools typically "[come] into existence as a way of meeting the terms of a court order for desegregation; they would not have been established in such numbers without that impetus, nor would they have gained political and administrative support without it."(7)

      Magnet school curricula are unique because they revolve around special themes and methods of instruction. The first magnet schools drew their themes from specialty schools such as the Bronx School of Science, Boston Latin School, and Lane Tech in Chicago, adopting areas of specialization such as science, mathematics, and performing arts. The major difference between magnet schools and specialty schools is that magnet students are generally selected as a result of their professed interest in the school rather than according to their performance on an aptitude test or during an audition.(8)' As interest in magnet schools has grown, an even wider range of magnet themes has developed, including "open school, alternative school, career exploration, and traditional schools, as well as other curricular themes such as health science, foreign languages, humanities, business management and computer science."(9)

      Magnet school structures generally come in two varieties: full-site magnet programs that constitute the entire school and partial-site magnet programs, where the magnet program is "an enclave in a larger regular school."(10) In full-site magnets, all students are transfer students mixed together in the magnet program.(11) In partial-site magnets, only part of the school is comprised of transfer students who have access to the magnet curriculum. Partial-site magnets are often placed in schools that were predominantly minority prior to desegregation efforts. The magnet portion of the school is supposed to be so enticing that it pulls white students away from their neighborhood schools to attend a formerly minority school. A partial-site magnet achieves overall building desegregation by attracting enough white transfer students to balance the number of neighborhood minority students already attending the school. Yet, partial-site magnet schools are particularly prone to segregating students within the school because the white transfer students rarely take classes with the minority nontransfer students because the two groups follow separate curriculum tracks.(12) As a result, not only are the nonmagnet students denied the company of the magnet students; they are also denied the special attention, financial support, and superior educational opportunity the magnet students receive.(13)

      Magnet schools are presently used extensively as part of court-ordered desegregation plans throughout the United States.(14) Because most of these plans depend primarily on parental choice to assign students to schools and most of the partial-site magnets created under these plans are located in minority neighborhoods,(15) the majority of court-endorsed magnet schools are particularly susceptible to within-school segregation. Courts may choose a desegregation plan that depends on a traditional (mandatory) student assignment method--school officials assigning students to a particular school--or may choose a plan that depends on parental/student choice as the method of assigning students to a particular school. The student assignment method can have significant effects on classroom racial composition in the magnet schools in the district. As part of desegregation plans, magnet schools are used either as occasional "sweeteners" (in magnet-mandatory assignment plans) to make the student assignments more palatable to the public or as key components (in magnet-voluntary assignment plans) designed to induce attendance choices that will create racial balance throughout the system.(16)

      Implementing a full-site magnet school requires emptying out the soon-to-be-magnet school and filling it with all new transfer students, both majority and minority students, who have chosen the unique curriculum. Those implementing magnet-voluntary plans find this cumbersome because they do not know (or fail to consider) what to do with the minority students who need to be replaced by white students to achieve racial balance in the minority neighborhood.(17) Desegregation plans depending on student choice to assign students to particular schools (magnet-voluntary assignment plans) create far more partial-site magnet schools than plans that rely on mandatory student assignment. And no mandatory reassignment plan has been implemented in the northern United States since 1981, while only two have been implemented in the South since that time.(18) As a consequence, nearly every court-ordered desegregation plan since the early 1980's has resulted in the creation of several partial-site magnet schools and only one, two, or often no full-site magnet schools.(19)

   2. Causes of Classroom Segregation in Magnet Schools

      Classroom segregation does exist in many schools that are racially balanced at the building level,(20) and considerable analytic and anecdotal evidence suggests that partial-site magnet schools often operate racially imbalanced classes.(21) Determining whether magnet schools create more classroom segregation than nonmagnet schools will require comparing classroom racial composition in magnet schools to that of schools desegregated by other methods.(22) Empirical evidence documenting classroom segregation in magnet schools is sparse.(23) This may be due in large part to the lack of general research on classroom segregation.

      The two factors repeatedly identified as causing classroom segregation within otherwise desegregated buildings are (1) methods of assigning students to academic programs, such...