With the new administration in Washington, school choice is in the news. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a long-time school choice proponent, and the administration has signaled it is likely to pursue some big-ticket school choice reforms. Whereas most of the energy in the school choice debates has focused on vouchers and charter schools, relatively little attention has been paid to another important choice model that serves as many students as charters and has been in existence for longer—magnet schools.
Morgan Polikoff and Tenice Hardaway at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, in this piece published by The Brookings Institution, take a look at the prevalence of magnet schools — more than 3,000 magnets across more than 600 school districts within 34 states—and their characteristics.