Los Angeles Unified School District - Magnet Programs

Magnet Programs

As of January 2005 LAUSD has 162 magnet schools with about 53,500 students. In 2004, the school district admitted 16,000 new students into these magnet schools out of a pool of 66,000 applications. Cara Mia DiMassa of the Los Angeles Times said that the schools, "designed to be among the best campuses in the district, mostly are as competitive for applicants as any popular private school."

The district assigns points to prospective applicants based on certain conditions: students who have applied for magnet schools before receive additional points, students who live in overcrowded zoned schools receive points, and students who live in mostly minority communities receive points. In addition, the magnet schools have racial quotas. Each school is to have 30-40% non-Hispanic White students and 60-70% minority students. As of 2005, within LAUSD, 90% of the overall student body consists of racial and ethnic minorities.

The magnet schools were established in 1977 as an alternative to forced desegregation busing. The racial quota system was devised at a time when the integration focus was on making Black and White students attend school together. Since then, the district demographics changed.

As of January 2005, of the Hispanic students in LAUSD, 4.6% attended magnet schools. During the same period, of the Asian students in LAUSD, 20% of them attended magnet schools. Of the White students in LAUSD, 16% attended magnet schools. of all magnet school students, 46.5% are Hispanic, 20% are White, 19.2% are Black, 10.2% are Asian, 3.6% are Filipino, and .6% are other. The overall LAUSD student body was 72.8% Hispanic, 11.6% Black, 9% White, 3.8% Asian, 2.2% Filipino, and .6% other.