Integration by Magnets

The idea seems simple enough: create schools with special programs, and they will attract students from all parts of the city. Such "magnet" schools are becoming increasingly popular not only as a means of providing superior education--and not just to the brightest children--but also as a method of desegregation. Detroit started some magnets four years ago; new ones are planned for Chicago and New York. Last week thousands of Boston parents signed their children up for a variety of innovative courses, ranging from aviation technology to bilingual studies, in 22 magnet schools due to open in September.

The Boston magnets--representing the largest use of the idea to date--are designed to hold fully 18,600 of the city's projected 72,000 school pupils. They were called for in Phase II of Federal District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity's desegregation plan, after his court-ordered forced busing touched off street violence and massive school absenteeism last fall. Now Garrity hopes that the magnet schools will offer good enough programs to induce white students from South Boston, for example, to go (by either special bus or public transportation) to a school in Roxbury's black ghetto. To that end, some 20 Boston-area colleges and universities are developing special courses for magnet schools.

Unlike Boston's regular schools, which are still predominantly white or black, the magnet schools will have a racial quota, reflecting the city's total enrollment: 52% white, 36% black, 12% other minorities. Only about 25% of these students will live in the district of the magnet school.

So far, Garrity's plan for magnet schools has eased some opposition to busing, although many teachers doubt that enough time remains to recruit students or adopt special programs. John Doherty, former president of the Boston Teachers Union, supports magnets but fears that "the magnetism won't be sufficient in September to bring kids into the magnet schools. They will [then] be assigned on an involuntary basis, and having a large portion of kids assigned to what are supposed to be magnet schools is a contradiction in terms." Boston still has fierce advocates of purely neighborhood schools. Says Elvira ("Pixie") Palladino, East Boston leader of ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights): "You'll never get to the point where kids will go out of their schools for better programs."

On the Near West Side of Chicago, meanwhile, the $30 million Whitney M. Young Jr. High School will open as a magnet in the fall with--among other things--an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a special center for the performing arts and a separate curriculum for medical studies. Whitney Young also has a strict admissions quota: 40% white, 40% black, 10% Latin, 5% other minorities and 5% at the discretion of the principal. Says Assistant School Superintendent Joseph Hannon: "It's supposed to be a laboratory of the city."

White Havens. Detroit started eight magnet middle schools (for grades 5 through 8) in 1971, and, if anything, they have worked too well. School Board President Cornelius Golightly says, "They were successful and they will continue to be successful because they're havens for whites." Golightly charges that whites have fled other Detroit schools for the magnets, which offer smaller classes, more original courses (math students, for example, work with a computer), and spend more money per pupil. Despite the recognized shortcomings of magnet schools, the Detroit school board recently included a proposal for more of them as part of its recommendations to the federal court that is drawing up the city's desegregation plans for the fall.

In New York, Federal Judge Jack Weinstein last year ordered housing officials to help desegregate Mark Twain Junior High in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, but then backed off and approved plans for a magnet instead. Mark Twain--with an 83% black and Puerto Rican enrollment--is in the middle of a nonwhite enclave surrounded by a larger white neighborhood; the five other junior high schools in the area are overwhelmingly white.

Under the new plan, Mark Twain's enrollment will be 70% white next fall, when the school becomes a magnet for "intellectually gifted and talented" students. Mark Twain will offer special programs in almost everything from athletics through fine arts to science, and is having no trouble recruiting students. To date, 625 students have applied for the 568 spots in the school's seventh grade. Next fall most of Mark Twain's dispossessed black students will be assigned to other white schools in the neighborhood.

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