Study purpose

Magnet schools represent an effort to promote school desegregation and enhance educational quality. The federal government has provided substantial support for magnet schools through the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), which has distributed over $739 million since 1985 to support the development and implementation of new magnet programs and the expansion of existing programs. The MSAP is scheduled for reauthorization in 1993 and the last major study of magnet schools is nearly a decade old, predating the MSAP.

This report addresses the following questions:

• How prevalent are magnet programs in American schools today?
• What are the characteristics of magnet programs?
• What has been the impact of federal support for magnet programs?
• How do magnets compare to nonmagnet specialty schools and programs of choice?

Subsequent reports will examine the impact of MSAP-funded and other magnet programs on desegregation and school quality.

Study design

Data were collected through telephone surveys of a random sample of 600 multischool districts, follow-up telephone interviews with a representative subset of 127 districts with magnet schools and 28 districts with mandatory desegregation plans but no magnet schools, and mail questionnaires distributed to approximately 2,000 magnet schools and programs.

Prevalence of magnet programs

The number of magnet school programs has increased dramatically over the past decade, with one in two large urban districts currently offering magnet school programs.

• The number of individual magnet schools has more than doubled over the past decade, with a total of 2,400 magnet schools and 3,200 individual magnet programs (some schools house more than one magnet program) being offered during the 1991-92 school year. At least 230 public school districts were operating magnet school programs in 1991-92, representing an increase of 67% over the past decade.

• Magnet school programs are associated primarily, although not exclusively, with formal desegregation plans, and a substantial proportion of desegregation plans involve magnets. Over one in four (29%) of the districts operating under desegregation plans include magnets as part of their desegregation plan.

Magnet programs are attracting increasing numbers of students, and there is considerable unmet demand for magnet programs.

• Of the approximately 35 million students in multischool public school systems, nearly one in four (24%) were enrolled in districts having one or more magnet schools. On average, 15% of students in magnet districts were enrolled in magnet programs, totaling 1.2 million students nationwide--a three-fold increase in magnet program enrollment since 1981-82.

• Approximately half of the magnet programs maintain waiting lists, with almost 123,000 names on those lists. This figure probably underestimates the unmet demand for magnet programs, since the existence of waiting lists may deter some students and parents from applying.

Magnet schools and school desegregation plans are primarily phenomena of large urban school systems with higher-than-average minority enrollments.

• Over half (54%) of the districts offering magnet school programs were located in large urban districts, and 78% of students in districts with magnets were in large urban districts.

• While desegregation plans were found in districts of all sizes, over half (58%) of students affected by desegregation plans were in large urban districts.

• Magnet school programs tended to be concentrated in districts having minority enrollments of 50 percent or more.

• Both magnet school programs and desegregation plans were found in school districts throughout the country; however, while desegregation plans are more prevalent in the Southeast, magnet school programs were more likely to be found in the Northeast.

Characteristics of magnet programs

Magnet schools offer a wide range of distinctive programs, including programs emphasizing academic subjects such as math, science, aerospace technology, language immersion, or humanities (37%); instructional approaches such as basic skills, open classrooms, individualized instruction, Montessori, or enriched curricula (27%); career/vocational education (14%); gifted-talented programs (12%); and the arts (11%).

Most magnet school programs (58%) were whole school magnets, where all students in the school participate in the magnet program. Another 38% operated as program within school (PWS) magnets, where only a portion of the students in the school participated in the magnet program.

• Whole school magnets can further be characterized as dedicated magnets (32%), where there is no attendance zone and all students must explicitly choose to attend, and attendance zone magnets (26%), where some students attend the school because they live in the surrounding neighborhood, regardless of their race-ethnicity, while others from outside the attendance zone may apply for admission.

• Whole school magnets of both types tend to be more prevalent in elementary schools, while PWS magnets tend to be more common in the larger middle and secondary schools.

Magnet districts actively encourage and assist students to enroll in magnet schools, through outreach efforts to inform students about the programs and by providing transportation services to students.

• The typical magnet district employed more than six outreach strategies, including developing brochures describing the programs, distributing information about the programs to students, mailing information to parents, and providing tours of the magnet schools.

• Over three-fourths of magnet districts provided transportation to assist students to attend magnet schools.

Magnet schools are effective in attracting students from outside the immediate neighborhood, and they appear to be effective in attracting opposite race students to magnet schools. However, low-income students and students with special needs are somewhat underrepresented in magnet programs.

• Of the estimated 1.2 million students enrolled in magnet programs, 74% had transferred outside their neighborhood attendance zone to attend the magnet.

• In minority-dominant districts, more white students were enrolled in magnets (32% of all magnet students) than would be expected based on their overall representation in the district (20%). Conversely, in white-dominant districts, more minority students were enrolled in magnets (46% of all magnet students) than would be expected based on their overall representation in the district (31%).

• Low-income students, students with limited English proficiency (LEP), and special education students were less likely to be enrolled in magnet programs than would be expected based on their overall representation in the district. For example, LEP students represented 11% of the students in magnet districts but only 7% of the students in magnet programs.

Impact of federal support for magnet programs

Federal support for magnet programs has increased dramatically over the past decade.

• Since the inception of the Magnet Schools Assistance Program in 1985, over $739 million in MSAP grants has been awarded to a total of 117 school districts (half of all districts having magnet schools).

MSAP funding has been effective in encouraging and enabling districts to establish or expand magnet school programs.

• The concept of MSAP funds as "seed money" appears to be viable; the vast majority (87%) of former MSAP grantees maintained their magnet school programs, although with some reductions in teachers and supplies, after their federal funding ended.

• Magnet school programs were more extensive in districts that received federal funding, with 30% of schools in funded districts being magnets, compared to 21% of schools in non-funded districts.

• Of districts receiving MSAP funding, 39% used that funding to start new magnet school programs, and an additional 39% used it to add new magnet schools to their programs. Other districts used their MSAP grants for program enhancement and improvement.

• Districts receiving federal MSAP funds tend to engage in more outreach and are more likely to provide transportation services than magnet districts that do not receive MSAP support (although MSAP funds do not directly support transportation).

• Nearly all (93%) of MSAP-funded districts indicated they could not accommodate all the students who wanted to enroll in magnet programs, compared to 61% of non-MSAP-funded districts. At the same time, the average size of the magnet program waiting lists for non-MSAP-funded districts (246 students) was nearly twice as large as for programs in districts that received MSAP support (129 students). This suggests that MSAP-funded districts, which tend to have larger magnet school programs than other districts, are able to accommodate a greater number of students who want to attend magnet programs.

Magnet schools in comparison with nonmagnet specialty schools and programs of choice

Taking both magnet and nonmagnet programs into account, 43% of the students in multischool public school systems are in districts with specialty schools or school choice programs.

• Among the 6,400 multischool districts nationwide, over one in six (18%) offered nonmagnet specialty programs (i.e., programs with a distinctive curriculum or instructional approach); these districts served 31% of the students in multischool districts nationwide.

• Over one multischool district in five (23%) offered nonmagnet choice programs that permit students to attend schools other than their assigned neighborhood school; these districts also served 25% of the students in multischool districts nationwide.

Nonmagnet specialty programs typically provide fewer options for students than do magnet programs, tend to be concentrated at the secondary level, are more likely to offer gifted and talented or vocational curricula, and are much less likely to offer subject-matter oriented curricula.

• Nearly 60% of the districts offering specialty programs had only one such program, and another 15% offer only two such schools.

• Over 41% of specialty programs had a career-vocational emphasis and 20% were gifted and talented programs, while only 5% featured a distinctive subject matter emphasis.

Districts with choice programs expend less effort on disseminating information to promote these programs than do magnet districts, and they are less likely to provide transportation services to students who change schools under the choice program.

• Participation in nonmagnet programs of choice is substantially lower than participation in magnet school programs, with participation rates of 9% in within-district choice programs and 2% in between-district choice programs, as compared to 15% participating in magnet programs.

Copies of the report, Educational Innovation in Multiracial Contexts: The Growth of Magnet Schools in American Education, are available by writing the Planning and Evaluation Service, Office of the Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Room 3127, Washington, DC 20202-8240.