Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Where are all the "gifted magnets" located?

Los Angeles USD has a gifted magnet program, including a Highly Gifted magnet.

http://echoices.lausd.net/

I'm not sure what your point is. You're really talking about something completely different.

Magnet schools were invented for the express purpose of meeting racial quotas. That's the reason they exist.

I use the term "magnet" but it's actually a school within a school...everyone in it is scoring in the top couple percentiles for ability/achievement. Basically what happens is that the district uses a school that has a lot of extra space and designates certain classrooms. I think it actually benefits the district in many ways.
1) they can use the gifted kids' scores to boost up the otherwise pathetic scores of the school on standardized tests. Approx. 20 percent of the school is highly gifted so it helps!
2) It saves on transportation costs because they don't bus the gifted kids from other parts of the district..parents have to drive. Otherwise most of these kids would be bused to their local schools
3) It solves the problem of the building having too much space and not enough kids otherwise.

It got started because parents petitioned the school board, probably citing these various advantages for the district.

Our school district (suburb of Chicago) has a highly gifted magnet program. It i a school within a school an is self contained. The school is not a low achieving school (if magnet is taken away it will still have high scores on state testing). The school is 3rd thru 6th. We have a jr high that these kids then attend, again a school within a school type program.

what Frannie describes is true for 3rd thru 6th grade. these kids have no classroom interaction with the rest of the school. In junior high though things slightly change. My daughter who's a 7th grader takes social studies and language arts with only 7th grade magnets and science with 7th and 8th grade magnets all her other academic classes geometry and Spanish are taken with the rest of the school.

Our "magnet" school is pretty much what Blackcat described. Ours started as few years ago as a response to our district losing students to the adjoining district's gifted program, which identifies kids at 1st grade and to local private schools.
Some of the privates have started a "PACE" program to allow for acceleration by making all core classes start at the same time over grade levels, in response to parents pulling them out to apply at our school.

Check this list. http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/schools.htm then search through for the word magnet. Maybe a dozen schools, in 4 states, but most of them in LA. The next question is whether selection is based on achievement test or IQ test. Would you move to LA just for a shot at it. This is not on the hoagies list but interesting http://www.fremont.k12.ca.us/Page/237

An interesting related question is whether there are gifted charter schools. A few states offer some of those. Charter laws vary from state to state. I am not sure "gifted charter" is possible in California. At least, I don't see one on the hoagies list. But in some states charter also means you don't have to live in that exact district. So that's magnet-like.

I think the Basis charter schools require 6 AP exams to graduate
http://basisschools.org/basis-model/graduation-options , but I don't know what scores on those exams are needed. They are implicitly filtering for some level of giftedness as well as conscientiousness.

There are definitely states which don't allow charter schools to restrict entry by testing.

I send my older child to an elementary gifted magnet and my younger child will also attend. I do not want to say where it is because there are not very many of these schools in the country. It is not LA.