A reporter asked, “How’s it working?” The Superintendent thought a moment, repeated the question, and answered, “It works like a magnet.”

The name stuck: “magnet schools.”

Like many educational concepts, magnets have no precise definition.

To the extent they represent parental, student and teacher choice they have been with us forever as the private schools and residential academies of the wealthy. But the idea of public school choice began in the late 1960s.

There are always parents whose disagreement with mainstream values motivates their creation of private schools. In the 1960s, it was the counterculture.  Today, it’s religious values.

Most counterculture schools faded from the scene, but not before demonstrating there are a variety of successful ways to educate kids.

By the late 1960s magnet schools had another advantage. If a community is segregated, its “neighborhood schools” will be segregated schools. Magnet schools offered a way for white parents to choose their way into compliance with court integration orders.

Tacoma’s McCarver in 1968. Trotter in Boston, 1969. Four schools in Minneapolis. Then New York, Dallas, Cincinnati. The Detroit court order included such a voluntary component. A movement was underway.

By the early 1990s, one-fourth of all school children were in districts with magnet schools. And are they popular!

Remove the seed money grants and 87 percent continue the programs. Nearly 95 percent of the districts with magnets can’t accommodate all applicants.

Put “magnet schools” into the Web search engine Google and you get 52,500 hits. Tucson hosted a Magnet 2000 conference just last week.

No, the movement has not slowed, but today’s emphasis isn’t on desegregation.

Not surprisingly, choice itself is a major factor in the parental involvement and student satisfaction essential to academic achievement.

Students want to be there. Parents want them to be. Parents “contract” to participate. Students contract to behave.

We have schools with programs as good as the nation’s best magnet schools.

The difference is that students, parents and teachers in our school district don’t have choice.

Students learn in different ways. Create a learning environment that emphasizes a child’s aptitudes and interests, and her performance will improve in other areas as well.

Our children aren’t failing our schools, our schools are failing our children. Magnet schools can reduce or eliminate that failure.

Most magnets emphasize a subject matter theme. Everything from aerospace to music and the arts, dual language immersion to math and science. Others emphasize an instructional approach: open classrooms, individualized instruction, Montessori. Some are career-based. We might offer a year-round magnet.

Two-thirds are “whole school magnets” where all students participate.

Others are “programs within schools.” Some are “dedicated magnets” available to any child. Others have an “attendance zone.” Three-fourths provide transportation.

“Choice” is the only consistency.

There are magnet schools up the road in Cedar Rapids. Taylor emphasizes technology; Polk is considering foreign language. McKinley is a fine arts middle school.

Betsy Huston at Cedar Rapids’ Johnson Elementary described to me with understandable pride her school’s fine arts focus. Art, dance, theater, symphony. Everything from tap dancing to an accomplished gospel choir. Math and reading skills taught in a fine arts context to students anxious to learn. “Win-win,” she calls it.

Like Johnson, most magnets use theme-focused materials both for their enhanced selection of courses and their basic curriculum. For example, a math and science magnet in Chattanooga teaches reading skills from books about science and math.

As if these aren’t reasons enough for us to consider magnet schools, think about our “boundaries” issues. Our best projections indicate a decline in total district enrollment – but with overcrowded schools on the west side of town and schools half-empty on the east side.

Building new schools costs tens of millions of dollars. Using the ones we have costs nothing. Give west side parents the choice of an attractive magnet school program on the east side, provide transportation, and our overcrowding problem vanishes like the morning dew.

Choice came to Houston 30 years ago. It’s spread across America. Some day it will make it to our district. We can continue to postpone it, but we can’t prevent it.

It can take the form of the vouchers that will weaken public education as we’ve known it. Or it can take the form of the magnet schools that will strengthen it. That’s another kind of choice. And it’s ours.

Nicholas Johnson is an Iowa City School Board member. More information is available on his Web site, http://www.nicholasjohnson.org.