SCHOOLS: The Busing Dilemma

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busing. Another method would be to create more "magnet schools," which are designed to improve the education of blacks and also attract some whites. For example, Trotter High School, which was built in Boston's Roxbury ghetto in 1969, was heavily funded, staffed with some of Boston's best teachers, and given an exciting, innovative curriculum including fine arts courses. The result: before the city schools were disrupted by busing, Trotter was two-thirds black and yet had a long waiting list of whites. Just this year, previously all-black Hamilton Park Elementary School in the Dallas suburb of Richardson was turned into a model magnet school that is totally integrated. It offers an outstanding curriculum including courses in gymnastics, drama and music, and a 16-to-l pupil-teacher ratio; 80% of the faculty hold masters' degrees. Last week 289 white students voluntarily began attending the school, balancing 265 blacks.

Such schools usually are far too expensive to be anything more than glamorous exceptions. But there are less costly approaches. In an effort to ease the antibusing sentiment among whites, Boston this year has paired nearly two-thirds of its schools with 22 colleges and universities; using $900,000 in state funds, the schools are planning new curriculums, teacher workshops and model language programs to improve the quality of instruction. The program's success cannot be measured for at least several months, but the schools averaged 6% higher enrollments than others in Boston last week.

Instead of forced busing. Columnist Raspberry recommends that students be allowed to transfer voluntarily to any school where they would improve the racial balance. Such a policy, he notes, would "not generate the fear-spawned opposition that busing has generated." That, indeed, has been the experience in Portland, Ore., which already uses a voluntary transfer system. To date, 2,700 pupils, mostly black, have shifted to schools in white neighborhoods that have vacancies. Since whites are not forced to send their children to predominantly black schools, there has been no white flight from the city because of the transfer program.

The nation needs a greater commitment to improving the education of blacks, both those who remain in inner-city schools and those who are bused to predominantly white schools. Says a Baltimore school administrator: "These children aren't born retarded. We just haven't figured out how to teach them; so they end up functionally retarded." Tim Black, a Chicago community college teacher, has found college-level black students "who are very interested and highly motivated but cannot read above the first-or second-grade level."

Part of the solution, educators generally agree, is to concentrate on the earliest grades. Despite some contradictory evidence, many studies show that Head Start, a federal early-learning program, has improved black educational skills, particularly when the children go on to fairly sound schools. On the other hand, the gains are quickly lost if the pupils enter inferior schools. Most educators, therefore, call for spending more to upgrade the teachers at black schools and expanding Head Start.

Motivation remains a basic problem for black students. Says Phyllis Denny, a black counselor at Denver's Hamilton Junior High School: "White students