AISD De-Magnetized?
A proposal to move AISD's Liberal Arts Academy to LBJ High School almost certainly means resegregation for Johnston High School, its former home.
By Michael May, Fri., Nov. 16, 2001
The reasons for the proposed move are many -- but in the broadest sense, the decision appears to reflect a statewide rejection of school integration as a viable goal. When AISD -- like most Texas school districts, under pressure to desegregate -- placed two of Austin's magnet programs within Eastside high schools in the late 1980s, it seemed a creative way to integrate the city's most segregated schools. Not only would white students from across the district volunteer to be bussed, but the neighborhood students would benefit from the availability of an advanced curriculum and an influx of the district's best teachers and resources.
But the declared hope that neighborhood students would benefit from the magnet programs has never been fully realized. Instead, according to school sources, magnet students at Johnston have dominated the newspaper staff and band, and while neighborhood students technically have access to magnet classes, some say that they were never made to feel welcome. "The administrators say, 'Yes, come on in,'" says Barbara Hawthorne, a neighborhood parent and currently president of the Johnston Parent-Teacher-Student Association. "But it seems that they really mean 'No.' They have never tried to make neighborhood kids feel comfortable in those classes." (Johnston administrators could not be reached for comment.) So while the new magnet students will benefit academically from an expanded curriculum at LBJ that will include math, science, and liberal arts, Johnston High will return to stark segregation -- with only a negligible percentage of white neighborhood students.
Paradoxically, the resegregation that will follow the centralization of the AISD magnets may work to the academic advantage of neighborhood students -- at least in the short term. When the Hopwood decision effectively outlawed the use of affirmative action in higher education admissions, minority legislators responded with the Top Ten Percent plan: Students in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes automatically qualify to be admitted to the state public university of their choice. In principle, the plan integrates higher education precisely because high schools are so segregated. For if a high school is 100% Latino (or nearly so), then all of the top 10% students will be Latino. The plan has already helped minority admissions at UT-Austin surpass levels previously achieved by affirmative action.
LBJ and Johnston also have just the kind of school populations that, in theory, should have benefited from the top 10% plan -- except that their magnet programs also housed some of the best students in the district, students whose GPAs are additionally raised by a grade point bonus for advanced classes. As a result, there is little or no room for neighborhood kids among the top 10% of GPAs. Moving the magnet school from Johnston to LBJ will allow Johnston neighborhood students to receive the full benefit of the 10% plan, and (thanks to yet another new state law, sponsored by state Rep. Dawnna Dukes) LBJ's neighborhood top 10% students will also be awarded automatic state university admission.
The magnet "school within a school" model had also thrown a wrench into the gears of another educational experiment: school accountability. The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test is designed to expose schools that fail to teach even the most basic skills. TAAS scores are separated out by race and class, and if any group falls below a 50% pass rate, or if more than 6% drop out, the school is deemed "low performing" and the school is penalized. At LBJ and Johnston, magnet and neighborhood TAAS scores are averaged together and (since almost all magnet students score highly on the TAAS) the schools have largely been praised for their performance.
But without the magnet programs, Johnston and LBJ are among the lowest-performing high schools in the district. Buddy Owens, a member of the community working group that helped draft the proposed changes, thinks that unmasking neighborhood low performance will force the district to address Johnston's failure to educate its poorest students.
Yet despite the academic ranking problems that will presumably be fixed by moving the magnet program out of Johnston, not everyone supports it. "I think it has been good for magnet and neighborhood kids to mingle at Johnston," says Hawthorne. "I think it is especially good for the magnet students to see a different side of Austin." Owens agrees that diversity is important, but wonders if the current situation really broadens the minds of magnet students. "I ask them how they feel about neighborhood kids and they say, 'They're funny. We goof off in the hallways together,'" he says. "I am very concerned that my son and daughter will grow up thinking that minorities are unmotivated and uninterested in education. I think diversity is much more important within the magnet program."
In the end, it is the magnet students who will apparently benefit most from the move, since it will substantially broaden the magnet curriculum. Whether the move will force AISD to improve the situation at Johnston remains to be seen. Hawthorne is skeptical. She sees the situation as just another example of AISD neglect of Eastside schools. "They should have been evaluating how the magnet program was affecting Johnston all along," she says. "'How many regular students are taking magnet classes? How many are on the newspaper staff? How are they getting along? Instead, they are just giving up on it, and, once again, the students suffer."
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