School choice draws upon market principles for restructuring education as schools compete for student enrollment by appealing to parents. When parents hold the power to choose where--among several options--to enroll their child for learning, they will select the school that best meets their child's academic and social-emotional needs (Cooper, 2005). Early school choice efforts were intended to strengthen school quality of learning through market forces of competition, and educational policy makers during the Civil Rights era further employed school choice to promote voluntary desegregation and integration goals (Valentine, 2016). Magnet schools remain the most common approach to school choice in the United States in terms of the number of districts involved, even though the overall number of students enrolled is fewer than in charter schools (Archbald, 2004). By offering programmatic specializations and curricular themes, magnet schools are designed to be in high demand from diverse groups of students across a district as parents then choose the magnet school as an alternative to their child's regularly assigned school. As of 2022, about 5.5% of all public school students, totaling 2.7 million children in the United States, attended magnet school programs in 30 of 50 states (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). This phenomenological, qualitative case study examined school leaders' perceptions and attitudes about magnet school programs as a school improvement strategy to promote school integration and student learning in two urban, mid-Atlantic school districts in the United States. The researcher sought to understand how 12 school leaders--including principals at the school level and Central administrators at the district level--make sense of parents' school choice decisions and the factors that they consider in designing, developing, and implementing a magnet elementary school program. Additionally, the researcher wanted to surface the values school leaders hold about student diversity and school integration in order to explore the extent to which magnet schools are perceived as a strategic school improvement lever for promoting a district's desegregation efforts. This study was grounded in theories of leading effective school change by Kotter (2012) and the "Magnet School Development Framework" (2018). The researcher discovered six key findings. Major findings revealed that school leaders' own personal values about student diversity and school integration influenced their leadership practices, and school leaders expressed that the stability and continuity of district leadership impacted the success of magnet school programming. Additional findings showed that nearly every school leader encountered challenges and difficulties with magnet school implementation, and they cited needs for continuing Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) support and explicit progress metrics to monitor the magnet schools over time. Conclusions were derived from six findings ascertained in the data analysis process of coding interview transcripts. The researcher concluded that most school and district-based leaders hold strong personal beliefs and convictions about all students benefiting from diverse classrooms and integrated schools. The researcher also concluded that external actions, such as judicial decisions about schools and federal MSAP funding grants, influence the implementation and evolution of local magnet schools. Finally, the researcher concluded that the success and effectiveness of magnet schools depend on many factors, including commitment by school leaders to integrated schools, stability of leadership to ensure progress monitoring over time, and high quality curricula and instructional practices that attract families to the schools. Based on the findings and conclusions, this study offers recommendations for policy, practice, and further research on magnet schools as a school improvement strategy. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]