Education: Integration by Magnets

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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.