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Show AFTER BROWN: THE CHALLENGE TO ATTAIN AN EQUAL UNITARY EDUCATION SYSTEM Jessica Shulsen Vouchers are not a solution to the problems that plague inner city schools. On the surface vouchers may appear to be a cure-all for poor minority students, but in fact, this individualistic approach would harm the very people that it is intended to help. It would take money away from already financially strapped inner city schools. Their federal funds would go to private schools in the form of government grants to the children fortunate enough to "escape." Inner city schools cannot be expected to improve by "competition" when money is being taking away from them and given to their competitors. Vouchers may bring more diversity into private schools in the beginning, but once such a program is available to families of all income levels, the private school may choose to take middle class white students. Higher income families offer more potential for revenue and private schools are not held to the same enrollment standards as public schools. Unlike their public counterpart, they can pick and choose which students they wish to take. Moreover, suspicion remains that advocates have more universal plans. They would like to extend vouchers to the middle class. Milwaukee mayor John Norquist said that he wants to phase out the income requirement on Milwaukee's voucher program. He finds that limiting the program to the inner city poor is unfair to middle class families ("Vouchers" 1998). Plans to expand the voucher program give the first glimpse of the advocates' overarching motive. Most of the strongest supporters of vouchers come from the religious right wing of the Republican Party. Twenty-one percent of private schools are nonsectarian and 32 percent are Catholic schools while the remaining 47 percent are other religious schools, which are predominately Protestant (Edmund 1999, 13). From 1984 to 1991 enrollment dropped 9 percent in private schools (Orfield et al. 1996, 62). In other words, a voucher program would be very beneficial to private religious schools. The solution for America's dual school system is more complex than an easy political one-liner. It requires combating the inequalities between inner city and suburban schools. It requires giving minority students the same educational opportunities; in other words, giving them access to a college education or higher paying jobs. That is not to say that mandatory policies are the only way to achieve an equal unitary educational system. On the contrary, coercive measures may achieve desegregation, but they are unable to alter attitudes and perceptions. One promising voluntary option to bring about a unitary and more equal education system is magnet schools. These schools first emerged in the 1970s as policymakers began to look for voluntary alternatives to coercive measures such as mandatory reassignment and forced busing. These alternative schools offer specialized curricular themes or special instructional approaches as well as additional resources and funding. These schools were to act as magnets in attracting students from the nearby neighborhoods in order to ensure a racially balanced student population (Henig 1994, 107). Unlike vouchers, magnets bring much needed resources into poor inner city schools while at the same time achieving a district's goals to desegregate. They offer a valid solution to the nation's current dual educational system, although they cannot remain in their 1970s format. Instead, magnet schools must suit the needs and challenges students in the twenty-first century face. However, before one expounds upon possible changes in magnet schools, one must examine how magnets currently achieve integration and improve inner city schools. Magnet schools are able to integrate more effectively than many court ordered desegregation plans, because the courts refrain from holding districts responsible for segregation that exists between the city and the suburb. As was discussed earlier, there is often little evidence that the suburbs operated under any sort of de jure segregated schools. As a result, mandatory reassignments between inner city and suburban schools are impermissible. Thus, efforts to create a unitary education system become very difficult. Magnet schools help circumvent these difficulties by attracting suburbanites to inner city schools. In fact, researcher Mary Haywood Metz argues that the proliferation of these schools is due in large part to the lower courts confirming them as a viable method of desegregation (Metz 1986, 26-7). Substantial evidence demonstrates that magnet schools improve interracial exposure. But, exposure rates can vary greatly depending upon demographics. In 1997 the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights found that magnets offered more interracial exposure than traditional public schools. In St. Louis, which has one of the largest magnet programs in the country, the Commission found that although African Americans accounted for 78 percent of the student population, they comprised 58 percent of magnet enrollments. In Cincinnati 62 percent of African American students were enrolled in magnet schools while 70 percent were attending traditional public schools. Both of these cities were operating under intra and inter-district voluntary plans. The enrollments demonstrate that both cities were able to increase the number of whites attending inner city schools, thus increasing the contact African American and white students experienced on a day-to-day basis (Fuller 1999, 27). Researchers Bruce Fuller and Richard Elmore found further evidence of interracial exposure in 1994- Their research showed that the ethnic composition of magnet programs varied depending on the ethnic composition of the district. In predominately minority districts, the percentage of minority students in magnet programs was lower than their percent in the district. In districts where a majority of the students were white the opposite was true (Fuller 1996, 166-67). Another study conducted by Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring found that in two large districts in St. Louis between half and 60 percent of students were enrolled in the alternative schools (Viadero 1999). Considering the strong evidence in support of interracial exposure, it is difficult to claim that magnets do not aid in desegregating public schools. The defining and most attractive attribute of magnet 70 |