ABSTRACT
Reynolds fostered magnet schools that offered attractive innovations or that focused on special fields like science, foreign languages, or the performing arts. By taking race into account when admitting students to magnet schools, Reynolds hoped to achieve more racial interaction than was possible through forced busing. In 1981 and 1982, Reynolds modified the position that the Carter administration had already staked out in school-desegregation cases that arose in Seattle, East Baton Rouge, and Chicago. Reynolds thought the sponsors of the initiative had a convincing legal argument in that they had significantly allowed for court-ordered busing to non-neighborhood schools if there was a judicial finding of illegal discrimination. In East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the controversy over school desegregation went back to the 1950s, when the public schools had been formally segregated. The prevailing sentiment in East Baton Rouge was heartfelt and plausible, but it failed to take account of the evolution and inversion of school-desegregation law.
