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Once considered a solution to desegregate racially divided districts, magnet schools today have been forced to evolve, given legal barriers that bar using race to determine school enrollment and increasing pressure to provide more public school choices.

La Salle Language Academy is a magnet school in the middle of one of Chicago's richest neighborhoods. The Mayor lives there. It was one of the first magnet schools established as a result of the order to desegregate Chicago schools three decades ago. La Salle is now slated for demagnetizing by the same Mayor who is shutting down schools primarily on the south and west side. It will take a desegregated school and turn it mostly white.

Students with disabilities won't be automatically banned from getting into a Los Angeles magnet school simply because they can't participate in a particular program for at least half the school day or because they require services in a separate classroom, the school district told a federally appointed monitor in a letter this week.

The New York State tests, going on now in middle and elementary schools, have always been high stakes for students, particularly in fourth and seventh grades, when their scores determine whether they end up in the very awful school they are zoned for or the very attractive magnet school that draws from a larger and more competitive pool. But the stakes have recently become equally high for teachers, whose ability to teach is being determined by their ability to improve students' test scores. Many people think it's about time. Teachers need to be held accountable for the work they are being paid to do, and many, many teachers need to get better at teaching. But tying teacher performance to student test scores is having an opposite effect: It's producing worse teachers.

The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure. As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools. The Civil Rights Project has been issuing annual reports on the spread of segregation in public schools and its impact on educational opportunity for 14 years. We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed. The charter effort, which has largely ignored the segregation issue, has been justified by claims about superior educational performance, which simply are not sustained by the research. Though there are some remarkable and diverse charter schools, most are neither. The lessons of what is needed to make choice work have usually been ignored in charter school policy. Magnet schools are the striking example of and offer a great deal of experience in how to create educationally successful and integrated choice options.

The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure. As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools. The Civil Rights Project has been issuing annual reports on the spread of segregation in public schools and its impact on educational opportunity for 14 years. We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed. The charter effort, which has largely ignored the segregation issue, has been justified by claims about superior educational performance, which simply are not sustained by the research. Though there are some remarkable and diverse charter schools, most are neither. The lessons of what is needed to make choice work have usually been ignored in charter school policy. Magnet schools are the striking example of and offer a great deal of experience in how to create educationally successful and integrated choice options.

The Connecticut classroom of the future may not be limited by a traditional school year, the four walls of a classroom, or even the standard progression of grades, based on a proposed packageof unusually bold changes that are being advanced by the state's school superintendents. Instead, the current system would be replaced by a "learner-centered" education program that would begin at age 3; offer parents a menu of options, including charter schools and magnet schools; and provide assessments when an individual child is ready to be tested, rather than having all children tested in a class at the same time.

In an historic reshuffling of the state's largest school system, Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson Friday will announce a series of districtwide reforms that include closing seven failing schools and increasing charter school accountability. The measures, which also call for an expansion of Newark's elite magnet school system, are by far the most far-reaching - and potentially controversial - initiatives of Anderson's eight-month tenure.

Steve Ball, executive principal at the East Literature Magnet School in Nashville, arrived at an English class unannounced one day this month and spent 60 minutes taking copious notes as he watched the teacher introduce and explain the concept of irony. "It was a good lesson," Mr. Ball said. But under Tennessee's new teacher-evaluation system, which is similar to systems being adopted around the country, Mr. Ball said he had to give the teacher a one - the lowest rating on a five-point scale - in one of 12 categories: breaking students into groups. Even though Mr. Ball had seen the same teacher, a successful veteran he declined to identify, group students effectively on other occasions, he felt that he had no choice but to follow the strict guidelines of the state's complicated rubric.

Teachers in Louisiana have found themselves on the frontlines of austerity. First, in an unprecedented vote, the Jefferson Parish School Board voted 8-1 to close seven campuses, four of them traditional elementary schools and the rest alternative programs for students struggling academically. The board issued more bad news when it announced it was dropping plans to add an art instruction wing at Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts due to cost concerns. Construction of the wing is a hot-button issue in the area because the proposal to convert Lincoln into a magnet school that would draw students from across the parish was a result of the deliberations leading up to the system's settling a forty-seven-year-old desegregation lawsuit last year.

"School quality is heavily dependent on social capital. When families flee their neighborhood schools for charters, magnets, private schools, or other "choice" schools, they are essentially seeking out a greater concentration of social capital. Shifting it from a "failing" neighborhood school to a charter or other choice school only exacerbates the problems that a lack of social capital can cause."

Houston is home to some of the most innovative educational concepts in the U.S. The Houston Independent School District itself has pioneered several initiatives, with many of its schools becoming national models. It boasts an award-winning magnet school program, broad school choice options and a pioneering accountability system. Unfortunately, of the many accolades that can be given to HISD programs, none can be given to HISD's high-profile effort to turn around failing schools, the Apollo 20 program.

If you read media reports about education, a lot of the stories you see make extraordinary claims about remarkable, heart-warming turnarounds in student achievement, which are often debunked some time later. This cycle of enthusiasm-debunking-disappointment gets us nowhere in improving outcomes for kids. Genuine miracles--dramatic turnarounds in formerly low-achieving schools--are just as likely in education as they are in any other field. That is, not very likely at all. In fact, most miracles in education turn out on inspection to be due to a change in the students served (as when a new charter or magnet school attracts higher performing students) or changes in demographics (as when school catchment areas are gentrifying). Apparent miracles may be due to changes in tests (as when an entire state gains in one year due to a change to an easier test), or due to other redefinitions of outcomes (as when districts reduce their standards for high school graduation and graduation rates increase). All too often "miracles" never happened at all, as when "turned around" schools deliver poor scores or graduation rates, or when large changes occur for one year but reverse in the following year, or when schools improve on one measure but all other indicators are poor.