Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Choices Worth Making: Creating, Sustaining, and Expanding Diverse Magnet Schools

In the department of publications I forgot about until my mother saw them online. . .

I helped to research and write some of this as part of a project about magnet schools I had the opportunity to work on for one of my fabulous professors, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley. It's a manual entitled, Choices Worth Making: Creating, Sustaining, and Expanding Diverse Magnet Schools.

Here's a clip:

"Magnet schools represent unique possibilities for bringing together educational stakeholders interested in advancing both school choice and equal educational opportunities. With policymakers across the political spectrum continuing to make the expansion of school choice a central educational policy goal, lessons from magnet schools become even more important to consider. Strong magnets combine diversity goals with excellent educational options to help combat the country’s deepening racial and economic school segregation.

This manual starts with empirical evidence intended to help the reader understand why magnet schools, and racially integrated magnet schools in particular, are worthy of consideration. In this section, we describe the research documenting the benefits associated with racial diversity and magnet schools. The next section provides a description of the history of magnet schools, which will help readers understand how and why magnets originated and how they have evolved over time."

Read the whole thing. I know a manual sounds like dreary reading, but this one isn't.