Another Retreat from Busing

By Ellie McGrath

Voluntary superschools become the model for the future

Webster Elementary School is in an aging, tired neighborhood of East San Diego. In 1976 it had four white students and 291 blacks and Hispanics, and an academic record that seemed to stress failure. But in 1977, when San Diego was ordered by the courts to integrate its schools, things changed greatly at Webster. It began to emphasize reading, writing and arithmetic; homework became mandatory, and a dress code was established. Today, Webster's enrollment is 211 whites and 285 minority students.

What happened to Webster is that it was turned into a so-called magnet school. Across the country, schools like this, usually specializing in one subject area, such as math and science, but always emphasizing excellence, proliferated during the 1970s to promote voluntary integration. The idea was that white families would be encouraged to enroll their children at an inner-city school offering a first-class program. And in some cities it was hoped that magnet schools would make court-ordered busing more palatable. "Magnets here are demonstrating that mandatory busing has not been the issue," says San Diego School Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant. "It has been the quality of education at the end of the line."

The Reagan Administration, which has tried to put the brakes on busing for the past three years, seems to agree. Last week the Justice Department approved a school-desegregation plan for Bakersfield, Calif., that does not include forced busing but instead relies on the creation of four elementary magnet schools to win the voluntary cooperation of the city's white parents. Says William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General for civil rights: "This is a blueprint for school desegregation in the future without relying on mandatory busing, which does not work in a very meaningful way."

The Bakersfield decision quickly brought to the surface once again the emotional issue of school desegregation. After the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1975 charged that the Bakersfield school district operated racially imbalanced schools, the district resisted busing. "The question now is whether the Justice Department is really committed to enforcing the law which requires desegregating schools," declared Mary Frances Berry, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Magnet schools by themselves do not achieve desegregation."

Norman Chachkin, a member of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law insisted that the agreement "should have been backed up with a provision for mandatory busing." He cited Chicago as a city where voluntary desegregation based on the creation of magnet schools "has been nothing short of a disaster." Indeed, even though Chicago has had a network of magnet schools since 1973, its white student population has dropped to 16% from 29%. By contrast, Boston's magnet-school program, established in 1974 as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan that included busing, has become a source of pride. However, notes School Superintendent Robert Spillane, "if desegregation is your goal, then it must be mandated."

Forced busing actually affects fewer than 4% of the country's elementary and secondary school students. Although busing has lacked public support and has resulted in violence and the movement of white families to the suburbs in some cities, it is not the total failure its critics claim it is. For example, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district, where busing was first ordered by a federal court in 1970, has successfully integrated classrooms.

There is also evidence that magnet schools have worked well both in integrating schools and in providing high-quality education. A study commissioned by the Department of Education and completed last September by Chicago-based James H. Lowry & Associates, found that in 130 of the largest urban school districts there are now more than 1,000 magnet schools. Of the ones studied, 80% reported achievement scores above the average of regular public district schools.

Buffalo began a voluntary desegregation program in 1976 that closed down a number of minority schools and replaced them with 17 magnet schools.

The racial mix of the schools is now nearly half black and half white. At the Westminster Avenue Elementary School in the Los Angeles suburb of Venice, the ordinary classes are 95% black and Hispanic, but within the school is the city's only elementary computer-science program, with a student body that is 40% white.

Despite its endorsement of magnet schools, the Administration is not prepared to pay for them. The Education Department study, which was released but never widely publicized, found that the growth of magnets was boosted tremendously by the passage of the Emergency School Aid Act in 1976. Under White House prodding, Congress repealed the act in 1981, and federal funds for magnets and other desegregation programs dropped from a high of about $400 million in 1979 to $25 million in fiscal '82. Among the 300 districts most interested in creating or maintaining magnets, 225 are having problems paying for them, the report said.

Probably the most notable case is Chicago. In 1980, under a consent decree, Washington agreed to help Chicago schools fund their desegregation plans. But only a trickle of federal dollars flowed into these efforts, which included the magnet schools. Last June a frustrated Chicago school board sued the Government for not living up to the terms of the agreement. The school board won its case, and Congress has appropriated $20 million. But this is hardly enough. Says Mary Broomfield, a Chicago school board official: "The failure of the Federal Government to provide more funding has certainly been a handicap." --By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles

With reporting by Patricia Delaney/Washington, Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles