Advantages of magnet schools
Why would students want to attend a magnet school? The reason may be because magnet schools offer a variety of specialized programs that students can choose from. Programs such as visual and performing arts, mathematics, sciences, and many others are available for students to choose from. Similar to having a major in college, students at magnet schools have their own specialized area that they can take classes in, in addition to basic academic classes. They are encouraged to be creative and to hone their skills in their area of interest.
Another reason magnet schools may be so popular could be due, in part, to the different teaching styles that some of the schools have adopted. For example, University of Hartford Magnet School, a magnet elementary school in West Hartford, Connecticut, has begun teaching through a style developed by psychologist Howard Gardner. Gardner’s theory on intelligence’s are emphasized in this school, so as to get students to “appreciate all their intelligences, learn their own strengths, and develop those strengths in conjunction with other intelligences” (Delisio, p9).
As opposed to regular, neighborhood high schools, magnet schools allow students from different districts to attend. Students may be bused in from over 30 miles away to attend a magnet school, while “some magnet schools have boarding facilities to allow students from out of state to attend” (Boland). In addition, magnet schools are an outlet for students from low-income, urban areas. “By the early 1980s, there were approximately 1,100 magnet schools in 140 urban school districts nationwide” (baeo.org, p2).
Disadvantages of magnet schools
Yet, there are some drawbacks to magnet schools. As prev...
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... in an Elementary Magnet School: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. Retrieved on April 19, 2004 from http://www.iste.org/jcte/PDFs/te18119wri.pdf
This website summarizes a longitudinal study done on a technology magnet school. The information provided includes how the school was started, what the school obtained through government grants, and how the technology in the school was benefiting students and teachers.
Steel, L. & Levine, R. (1994) Educational Innovation in Multiracial Contexts: The Growth of Magnet Schools in American Education. Palo Alto, California: American Institutes for Research.
This book gives information on the benefits of magnet schools, the types of funding magnet schools receive, and information on the types of students enrolled in magnet schools. Studies on magnet schools are also provided in this book.
The second is the concern over segregation and the effect it has on society. Mr. Kozol provides his own socially conscious and very informative view of the issues facing the children and educators in this poverty ravaged neighborhood. Those forces controlling public schools, Kozol points out, are the same ones perpetuating inequity and suffering elsewhere; pedagogic styles and shapes may change, but the basic parameters and purposes remain the same: desensitization, selective information, predetermined "options," indoctrination. In theory, the decision should have meant the end of school segregation, but in fact its legacy has proven far more muddled. While the principle of affirmative action under the trendy code word ''diversity'' has brought unparalleled integration into higher education, the military and corporate America, the sort of local school districts that Brown supposedly addressed have rarely become meaningfully integrated. In some respects, the black poor are more hopelessly concentrated in failing urban schools than ever, cut off not only from whites but from the flourishing black middle class. Kozol describes schools run almost like factories or prisons in grim detail. According to Kozol, US Schools are quite quickly becoming functionally segregated. Kozol lists the demographics of a slew of public schools in the states, named after prominent civil rights activists, whose classrooms are upwards of 97% black and Hispanic — in some cases despite being in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. It has been over 50 years since Brown vs. Board of Education. It is sad to read about the state of things today.
As a teenager growing up in New York City a major part of your life is the high school that you attend. New York City is filled with high schools, public, private, and parochial. Within the public school system in addition to "regular" public schools there are also special admission and magnet schools. Although these schools are all technically part of the same system, there are very great differences and disparities between them.
Education is a beautiful art, but mastering it is a very difficullt task. Determining what school different children should attend, what classes, and what they should learn is difficult to determine. The teachers, along with the parents, have to take several factors into consideration; such as cognitive, developmental, and emotional states. Children learn in all different ways. Some students are very hands on, but some hate using their hands. Some children have to see it, but others work best with verbal or written instructtions. In order to acomidate all students, different programs and schools have been created. STEM and Magnet Schools are an example of our society trying to reach out to all different learners. Both STEM and magnet schools
educational quality through thematic teaching of uniform curriculum (www.magnet.edu). Partially funded by the federal government through grants and assistance programs, magnet schools essentially provide choice to parents and students across America to gain a more specialized education.
My third policy alternative is to implement reverse magnet schools. I would like to start small and implement this policy on a small scale before scaling it up. To implement this policy on a trial period, I would survey two adjacent school districts, one with a high concentration of minorities and one which is predominately white, about magnets schools they would like to see in their area. Then I would implement two new magnet schools but in reverse, the magnet school that the white parents requested would be placed in the predominantly black school district and vice versa. Following the creation of these two new schools, free busing would be provided to both districts if they wanted their child to attend the magnet school in the other district.
The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the benefits and drawbacks of school choice with respect to the impact on the students involved in the process. Over the years, school vouchers, school choice and charter schools have been grouped into one umbrella category known as school choice. The three types of school choice are very different yet very much the same and each topic will be discussed in depth and analyzed with examples and opinions from other authors. Overall, there have always been experts with both positive and negative remarks about the issues surrounding school choice.
Five miles away, a world apart: One city, two schools, and the story of educational opportunity in modern America.
America’s public school system started off very rough, but through the dedication of many hard-working Americans, it was starting to shape into a system that allowed all children, regardless of race, gender, religion, or nation of origin, to have an education.
...using for many years. “In addition to the urban poor, other groups, ones not mentioned, can greatly benefit from a system that allows individual schools to focus on the gifted, special education or teen pregnancy programs”(Chub). Choices in schools allow a more custom fit in education for students of any or all categories.
Through programs that directly fuel desegregation in schools, our educational systems have become a melting pot of different races, languages, economic status and abilities. Programs have been in place for the past fifty years to bring student that live in school districts that lack quality educational choices, to schools that are capable of providing quality education to all who attend. Typically the trend appears to show that the schools of higher quality are located in suburban areas, leaving children who live in “black” inner-city areas to abandon the failing school systems of their neighborhoods for transportation to these suburban, “white” schools. (Angrist & Lang, 2004)
Education reform in the United States has recently come under scrutiny after many recent failed proposals. President George W. Bush implemented one of the most popular choices of education reform with his “No Child Left Behind” system. However, that policy reform in the past five years has faded to nothing more than a mistake. This mistake has haunted the education systems in America, but it is not the only reform proposal to shake up the school systems across the States. One new proposal that has caught the eye of some current state politicians is the idea of school choice. School choice is giving the option to parents to take their children to different schools, which is different from assigning children to schools based on the location of their houses. Does giving the parents of children an option to choose what school their child goes to create a spirit of competition? That is partly the goal with the school choice reform policy proposal along with many other facets that can completely revitalize the education system in the United States. The stipulations of this proposal involve a variety of suggestions to help strengthen the core of our education system.
Von Steuben is one of the better schools located in the north side of Chicago. Being one of the better schools also means better quality in education.There are two types of students: those who are Magnets, otherwise known as “Regulars”, and those known as Scholars. Although in the same building these students roam, they are both very different. Scholars have gone through more requirements for acceptance into the program while Regulars have simply been accepted based on a lottery system ran by admissions. Scholars are expected perform many more hours of community service and take more rigorous classes early on. In exchange, they receive slight but very much significant more opportunities. Such examples consist of field trips to highly acclaimed
One benefit is that teachers often think outside the box and are encouraged to be innovative and proactive in their classrooms. In contrast to the belief that many public-school teachers are traditional and rigid, charter school’s promoters have stated that community and parental involvement are much higher than those in traditional public schools. Therefore, charter schools are chosen because of their small class sizes, academic standards, different
"Research Center: Technology in Education." Education Week American Education News Site of Record. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. .
Courville, K. (2011). Technology and its use in Education: Present Roles and Future Prospects. Presented at the 2011 Recovery School District Technology Summit. Baton Rouge, LA.