What Happens After a School Closes?

School closure can be a jarring process for students, families and communities. Over the past decade, school closures have become a lightning rod, sparking debate across the country. These closures raise several key questions, including where students go after a low-performing school closes and how students perform academically after their move.

In a recent study, researchers at Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) examined these questions and provided data about student trajectories after school closures. Lead researchers Chunping Han and Margaret Raymond analyzed school performance and closure data from 26 states across a span of seven academic years (2006-2007 to 2012-2013).

The study provided an unprecedented aggregate picture of where school closures have occurred across the country and of where the affected students have been moving after each closure. Urban elementary schools in Michigan and Ohio experienced the highest rates of school closure during this time. The researchers also studied the academic performance of students in their new schools after closures occurred, as measured by scores on state-administered achievement tests.

Across both charter and traditional schools, closure rates were higher for low-performing schools with higher shares of minority students—specifically, black and Latino students—compared to similarly low-performing schools with fewer minorities. Furthermore, closure rates were even higher for low-performing schools with high-poverty student populations, compared to similarly low-performing schools with lower-poverty student populations. The researchers recommended that decision-makers evaluate their closure policies, criteria and practices in order to screen for explicit or unconscious bias in closure decisions, which tend to impact minority and high-poverty communities the most.

The research team also found that not all students were placed in better schools after a closure. Across both charter and traditional schools, slightly less than half of students landed in stronger school, while most students ended up in similarly low-performing schools. The researchers speculated that this pattern might be driven by parents’ preferences for maintaining stability or simply by the practical difficulty of finding higher-quality education options.

However, for those students who did land in a higher-quality schools after a closure, academic progress improved. This effect was most significant for black and Latino students in poverty. This signaled to researchers that the receiving school is an important factor in determining how a school closure affects student progress. Nonetheless, researchers recognized that this particular benefit of closure is limited given that higher-quality school alternatives may not be accessible, available or even known to parents in many cases.

Closing a school is a significant policy decision that deserves nuanced consideration, because it directly impacts students’ lives. The findings revealed by CREDO researchers are a first step towards establishing a more evidence-based discussion of how students are actually affected by the closure of low-performing schools. Decision-makers, including state agencies and school districts, should examine student performance and demographic data to consider how closure conditions may affect student academic progress before they make a decision to close a school.

Article source: Han, Chunping, Margaret E. Raymond, James L. Woodsworth, Yohannes Negassi, W. Payton Richardson, and Will Snow. “Lights Off: Practice and Impact of Closing Low-Performing Schools,” Stanford: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University, 2017.

Featured photo: cc/(XiXinXing, photo ID: 536079569, from iStock by Getty Images)