In destroying the old and making way for the new, social change is both
destructive and constructive. With reference to school desegregation,
educational planners, analysts, and policy makers have been preoccupied
with its destructive features and have given only limited attention to the
constructive aspects of this revolutionary event. Whether the school
desegregation struggle occurs in Pontiac, Michigan, Boston, Massachusetts,
or Richmond, California, as sociologist Lillian Rubin said, "the response is
the same--a cry of outrage and pain."

"We don't want our city to become another Boston" is the rallying call
by public-spirited citizens across the nation. A litany of negative outcomes
usually accompanies this declaration. The violence in Boston distracted
the public from seeing many of the fine accomplishments of school
desegregation.

One suspects that the citizens of any community would be pleased with a
public school system that had "a rating process for appointment of principals
. . . a personnel evaluation system, improved budget and personnel man-
agement . . . a citywide curriculum, the beginning of a systemwide testing
program and a new alliance between the schools and business," and an
organized data system. These are precisely what reporter Muriel Cohen
found in her assessment of the school desegregation process in Boston ten
years after litigation began in the federal court.

Moreover, in her article in the December 9, 1982, Boston Globe, Cohen
reported that patronage in the school system had been substantially reduced
and that parent councils had assumed a strong role in school decisions. The
Boston School Committee, a public policy-making body once described as
intransigent and now classified as progressive, has become more diversified
with minority and majority members since the school-desegregation court
order.

In addition to neighborhood attendance zones, a citywide magnet-school

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