Word: magnetism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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KCMSD's only remaining hope for racial balance was a system of magnet schools designed to lure whites back from private schools and the suburban districts. In 1986 Judge Clark ordered such a plan. After the KCMSD's enrollment became majority black in 1970, the district's voters, who remained majority white, had allowed the schools to literally fall apart, rejecting funding initiatives 19 times while pipes burst and ceilings collapsed. In addition to smaller classes and higher teacher salaries, Judge Clark's order required renovation of 55 schools and construction of 17. When the school district failed to come...
...moral appeal, however, the Kansas City plan's achievements appear modest when weighed against its enormous expense. The number of out-of-district white children enrolled at the magnet schools peaked at 1,476 last year. Standardized test scores have registered slight gains. White flight, while substantially slowed, has not been reversed: in 1985, the year before the magnet plan began, the district was 73.6% minority; this year it is 75.9% minority. If nothing else, horrible school facilities have been replaced with nice new ones, and for some that is justification enough. "I bet a lot of kids in Kansas...
Edward Newsome, an African-American lawyer in the real estate business who himself attended a segregated school in Texas, is a leader of the anti-magnet plan coalition that has dominated the Kansas City school board since 1994. He feels the underlying assumptions of desegregation are patronizing to blacks--as does Justice Thomas. "It never ceases to amaze me," wrote Thomas in his Missouri v. Jenkins concurrence, "that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior...
Says Newsome: "I welcomed the Supreme Court decision. I saw it as an opportunity for the first time in years to focus on removing the vestiges of segregation. For 10 years we've concentrated on bringing in white kids. There's been no Afrocentric-themed magnet school because it doesn't appeal to white folks...
...black. "With a Eurocentric curriculum, it appears one race is superior over the others," says Bullard. "The African-centered curriculum makes them feel, 'I'm a part of this. I'm not on the outside looking in.'" Something must be working: Chick's students outscore some of the magnet schools' pupils on standardized tests...