Magnet Programs, “Mission Creep,” and Mitigating Opportunity Gaps: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Magnet Program Themes and Racial Achievement Gaps

Background: In 2017, nearly 3.5 million students attended a magnet school (Magnet Schools of America, 2017) - a public school offering a specialized curriculum to diverse groups of students. Magnets were born from the school desegregation movement of the 1960s, but, within and beyond the context of magnet programming, racial diversity in schools has been increasingly deprioritized since the mid-1970s. This raises particular concern as racial achievement gaps continue to pervade American public education, fueled by gaps in the disparate learning opportunities afforded to White students and students of color. Often, magnet programming is promoted as a potential remedy to opportunity and achievement gaps, yet this aspiration has yet to be sufficiently explored, much less substantiated. Purpose: The purpose of this work was to explore the racial achievement gaps within magnet schools compared to nonmagnet schools. Further, I aimed to fill a significant gap in the literature by identifying which - if any - magnet themes (e.g., STEM, fine arts, Montessori) contribute to or mitigate within-school racial achievement gaps. I engaged in this work in hopes of developing actionable recommendations for school districts regarding equitable magnet programming that minimizes racial opportunity gaps. Methodology: In this quantitative study, I leveraged multiple regression to analyze the relationships between magnet programming and within-school racial achievement gaps in the 11 “major urban” public school districts in Texas. The campus-level sample consisted of 1,357 schools, representing nearly 950,000 students. I aggregated demographic and STAAR testing data published by the Texas Education Agency and analyzed district and campus websites to determine which schools offer magnet programs and with what themes. I calculated within-school racial achievement gaps in math and reading standardized test scores at the fifth grade and end-of-course (high school) levels. Using these data, I conducted multiple regressions to distill the ...