ABSTRACT
A magnet school is a school with a special theme and other attractive characteristics, whose purpose is to attract, rather than force, students of different races to the same school. Magnet schools were a school desegregation tool created in the United States in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s as an alternative to mandatory reassignment (e.g. ‘forced bussing’), which caused significant white flight and protest. With a voluntary magnet school plan, students could stay at their neighbourhood school or they could volunteer for a magnet school. Transportation was provided by the school district administration.
