Magnet Schools, like Charter Schools represent a new and innovative way of rethinking American Education. While different than Charter Schools, Magnet Schools are a popular way to use school choice. Hi, I’m Steve Beaman and welcome to this SBG Cast on the Intellectual Path.
I’ve written numerous times about the significance of rethinking American education. While there are pockets of excellence within the public schools, the national averages for student performance are sub-par, and within parts of the country, most notably the inner cities like Chicago, the schools are faced with social and political problems that are leading to disastrous performance. In a prior SBG Cast, I have written about Charter Schools and in a continuation this theme, time I’m looking at Magnet Schools.
Simply, Magnet schools were created in the 1960′s to help fight racial discrimination in the public school systems. Special schools were created, frequently with a specialized academic program that could draw children from across school boundaries so that the typical gerrymandering of school districts and the racial profiling that was done could be overcome. As they’ve developed over time, these schools typically have very high academic standards and very low, if nonexistent, dropout rates. Like Charter Schools, they operate to some extent outside the standard public school systems, so they’re more able to create academic environments with strong measures of accountability. There are currently about 4,000 Magnet Schools in the United States.
What makes them work to some extent are the higher standards in recruiting students. Rather than being “forced” to take any student within a district, Magnet Schools can use academic screening processes to insure they maintain their higher academic standards. This is a good thing as more serious students can be brought together to further their education.
On the contrary side though, the growth of the Magnet School movement does possibly lead to the Magnet Schools receiving the higher quality students thus leaving the less-performing students grouped together in the traditional public schools. So, some educators are opposed to the Magnet concept as it leads to further performance based segregation. And this is an understandable concern. However, all too frequently in this country, we are taking down the performance of the top students in order to accommodate the lesser students and this is NOT a prescription for excellence. As a “collective”, sure watching a few students excel is not something that’s desirable, but as “individuals” those individuals who have worked hard enough to participate in the Magnet School are undoubtedly benefited.
Perhaps the traditional public schools can learn some from the Magnet Schools. Maybe the traditional schools notion of being “all things to all people” should be reconsidered to provide more specialization to the schools. Tracks established for college certainly exist, but perhaps we should increasingly add tracks for trades and for paths that might not lead to University, but to a local community college to focus on one area of expertise.
The Charter Schools and Magnet Schools are creative ways to re-think American education. I hope we can learn from these and continue to think out of the box as we look toward the intellectual challenges faced by our society in an era of increasing global competition.
Tags: academic environments, charter schools, intellectual path, magnet schools, school boundaries