Opinion ID: 764702
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Development of Vision 21 Plan

Text: 14 With these goals in mind, the school district retained Dr. Foster and Dr. Joseph Darden, Dean of the Urban Affairs School at Michigan State University, to advise it on ways for improving student assignments. Based on the recommendations of these experts, the district court approved the school district's proposal to exempt from mandatory school assignment and the 15% parameters six elementary schools in which surrounding neighborhoods were racially integrated and further recommended that families in those areas be given the choice to have their children attend their community elementary school. This program, known as Phase One, was a success. Numerous students who had left the school district to attend private schools returned to their community schools and each school met the 15% limitation despite their exemption therefrom. 15 Soon thereafter, the school district developed a more comprehensive program knows as Vision 21 based on the idea that parents and students should have even greater choice in schools. Vision 21 had three main components: (1) strengthening the Cleveland schools' basic curriculum; (2) developing programs designed specifically to ensure African-American students opportunities for a quality education as measured by improved student outcomes over time; and (3) implementing parental choice, which called for a dramatic expansion of the magnet school program and introduction of community model schools. Under the third component, parents were offered multiple (usually three) school choices. For example, parents of an elementary school child could choose from either a district-wide magnet school or a community model school in their region. If a desegregated school was unavailable in their region, the program allowed the parents the option of choosing an integrated school outside the region. 16 Vision 21's parental choice program was designed to be phased in over four years. Dr. Foster and Dr. Darden noted that particular attention had to be paid to the three corners of the triangular school district, where schools persistently fell outside the 15% limits due to changing demographics and the long distances students were forced to travel. The school district thus proposed that the three corners no longer be paired with any other region but instead remain as autonomous regions not subject to the school district's 15% limitation. The district court approved Vision 21 on July 21, 1993, although it was clear that greater parental choice would result in a number of additional schools exceeding the district's 15% parameters. During the 1993-94 school year, the first year of Vision 21's implementation, 41 schools fell outside the 15% limitation. This was the result of treating the three corner regions as autonomous areas, altering the grade structure of schools in those corners (changing to K-5, 6-8, and 9-12), providing new choice options to community elementary schools in those regions, and suspending the annual assignment adjustments. 17