Atlanta’s history of magnet schools offers lessons for its future

In response to racial segregation in the 1950s and ’60s, Atlanta Public Schools introduced the Majority-to-Minority, or M-to-M, transfer program. The district later developed specialized magnet programs (where a school had a curricular focus and open enrollment) as another strategy for attracting students across neighborhoods and expanding access to distinctive academic opportunities.

For several decades APS used these magnet schools as a way to give students access to areas ranging from engineering to communications. It offered a chance to cross the lines of difference in the city for an excellent education, but implementation was far from perfect. As APS grapples with school facility usage, concentrated poverty and unequal access to resources, it is worth analyzing its past to make a more equitable future.

This summer I served as a Southern Education Leadership Initiative fellow with Brown’s Promise, a project of the Southern Education Foundation, to explore the legacy and policy implications of the APS magnet program. I conducted semi-structured half-hour interviews with 29 people: 27 former students and two former teachers. Their experiences represented five high schools and ranged from the mid-1980s through 2012.

Amari Brown, guest columnist. (Courtesy)

Four major findings emerged from the interviews:

Magnet programs offered strong academics

The magnet programs were places where academic achievement was expected and supported. Former students remembered challenging coursework, committed teachers and classmates who motivated one another. They were exposed to advanced material and required to develop strong learning study habits. Participants also described exposure to opportunities that may not have been available through a traditional high school curriculum (e.g., technology, competitions).

The ‘school within a school’ created both community and division

The magnet courses were not offered to all students in each building. Many participants described their experience as a “school within a school.” Magnet students often took classes together and moved through high school as a close-knit group. For some, this structure created a strong sense of belonging. It also created divisions between students. Participants repeatedly used the term “General Pop” to describe nonmagnet students, suggesting that the school was not only separated by academics but possibly within an informal social hierarchy. Several interviews raised concerns that magnet students received more attention and greater access to school resources than those in the neighborhood track.

Transportation was a ‘silent gatekeeper’ to access

Transportation was one of the most consistent concerns across the interviews. Because some students attended programs outside their assigned schools, many depended on APS buses or MARTA to travel across the city. Some participants described traveling from neighborhoods several miles away from schools in Midtown, Buckhead and North Atlanta. These trips could require multiple stops on different MARTA trains or buses. Participants recalled waking up before sunrise and spending long periods in transit. When after-school activities were included, some students could spend close to 12 hours away from home.

Magnet programs supported desegregation, but integration was uneven

Some understood the magnet system was part of the district’s effort to create more diverse schools. However, several described a pattern in which Black students traveled from the south side to attend programs in historically white or wealthier north side neighborhoods, while fewer white students traveled to predominantly Black communities. This trend created “one-way integration.” Participants also explained that, because of the “school within a school” model, a building could appear diverse overall while remaining divided internally. Magnet tracks specifically at North Atlanta and Grady high schools were described as more white and economically advantaged than the larger student body.

Lessons for APS and policymakers

The first APS magnet era mostly phased out in the late 2000s as the district moved toward transforming its large, traditional high schools into smaller schools and learning communities. It cannot be viewed as either a complete success or failure. It created meaningful academic opportunities, strong student communities and lasting pathways to college and careers. At the same time, access was shaped by transportation, neighborhood, family resources and students’ placement within the school.

Considering the high concentrations of poverty in the city today, along with the empty seats created by declining enrollment in some schools, APS could pursue a new era of programs that encourage integration across economic lines, including magnet schools. In so doing, APS must remember the lessons learned from their prior efforts.