The idea behind magnet schools is that you can improve the overall academic performance of a school if you increase the diversity of the economic and academic backgrounds of the students.

If you want to talk about the underlying idea behind almost every major educational reform in the United States in the last forty years, it is this: to destroy public education. If it is not the formal intent, it becomes the practical effect as the only way to get political support is to get support from Republicans, and Republicans hate public education on every level it is possible to hate something and will support it only on the conditions that it deteriorates public education.

Magnet schools able to admit, deny admission, and expel with greater ease, siphon off the best and the brightest from normal public schools, pulling down grades at those schools, which makes them easier to defund, or close, and leaves more students who are more expensive to educate.

Also see: “school choice” as a conservative talking point. Also see: divide and conquer.