Jefferson county public schools magnet program

In many of the best public high schools in a given state, the vast majority of students graduate and perform well in educational assessments. Students at top high schools also tend to perform well in college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT, with reported scores well above the out of nationwide average for the SAT and the Biden praises December jobs report: 'Americans are moving up to better jobs'. Education Secretary Cardona says "default should be in-person learning" amid Omicron surge.

The Niche ranking is based on academic and student life data from the U. Department of Education as well as student reviews submitted to Niche.

Data on student count and student-teacher ratio came from Niche. Pennsylvania dentist accused of murdering wife during big game hunting trip in Africa. Board of Education of Topeka, white families in Louisville and across the nation fled to the suburbs abandoning city schools rather than having their children co-mingle with Black students. Some boycotted the first days of school. Some protested and threw rocks at school buses. Others believed busing for the purpose of desegregation would be a temporary solution.

A Courier Journal editorial stressed that civil rights leaders believed housing desegregation should be the focus. The same editorial stated, "Many white suburbanites fear it [bussing] because they suspect that their children might be forced to return to the cities whence they fled only a few years ago, to aging schools in rundown neighborhoods where their youngsters would be swallowed up in a sea of blackness Busing is a temporary means to an explicit national goal.

Here's how. The JCPS magnet programs were the middle ground, and in granted white families a way to sidestep busing requirements to minimize the white flight from the public school system. While magnet numbers reduced forced busing and eschewed data for the benefit of white families, Black students continued to be bussed without choice by the thousands.

The temporary busing solution became permanent for families of color — a clear statement of whose concerns were, and still are, the priority for JCPS. Almost 40 years later, the system is still broken. The Courier Journal revealed earlier this year how unfair busing protocols remain. Integration goals continue to fall on the shoulders of an overburdened, underserved student population that should not have to shoulder this responsibility.

While the responsibility falls on Louisville and its failure to address systemic racism embedded in housing patterns, it also falls on the JCPS school board, which has knowingly compounded inequities through protocols that have been scrutinized and advised against for years.

More: This could be the last stop for busing in Louisville schools. Was it worth it? If you identify the issues and then decide not to do the work to provide quality education for everyone in our community, then you are complicit.

If parents are OK benefiting from a system that is hurting other children, they are complicit. If we are OK with segregated classrooms as a result of academic tracks or internal magnet programs, we are complicit. There is a racial reckoning happening in Louisville on the heels of the police killing of Breonna Taylor.

Consequently, these student groups have limited access to the specialized programming and opportunities magnets offer. Linda Duncan, a longtime Jefferson County school board member, put it bluntly: the district's magnets "are not real magnets. The U. Department of Education denied the district's request, according to records The Courier Journal obtained under Kentucky's public-records law. One of the proposal's weaknesses, the denial said, was insufficient evidence of strategies to reduce segregation.

School district officials and board members have been aware of the problem for years, and some have attempted reforms. But efforts to update Jefferson County's magnet program — many of which would weaken middle-class families' hold on the specialized schools — have continually failed, scuttled by a politically savvy base of magnet school parents and alumni. Thomas, then-director of the national nonprofit Magnet Schools of America MSA , incurred the wrath of those parents and alumni when he presented his group's findings to the Jefferson County school board in In the wake of nationwide social justice protests, proposed changes to sought-after magnet or exam schools in San Francisco, New York City and Boston have triggered tense protests and prolonged legal battles.

Meanwhile, a proposal to update Jefferson County's magnet system — and make it more equitable — hasn't been discussed publicly for nearly a year. There, recent policy changes already have led to what once was considered unimaginable: In a single admissions cycle, the share of low-income students enrolling this fall at the district's selective magnet high school skyrocketed.

When Thomas and his colleagues from Magnet Schools of America visited Jefferson County in early , they were shocked by the "immense complexity" of the district's school-choice system. At the time, Jefferson County Public Schools offered 59 magnet schools and programs, in addition to other choice offerings. As MSA officials dug into Jefferson County's magnet system, visited schools and reviewed policies, they were bewildered at the level of gate-keeping afforded to the district's most in-demand magnets, according to a page report the district commissioned.

Experts agree free transportation is a critical component for magnet school diversity. It eliminates a barrier to attendance for students whose parents may not own cars or whose cars are unreliable. The K J. Graham Brown School is the only public school in Jefferson County that does not provide buses for its students.