Between 2007 and 2022, California saw its K–12 public school enrollment decrease by more than 390,000 students, or more than 6 percent statewide, according to data from the state’s Department of Education. The baby bust is a large contributor to that decline, as is the rising cost of living driving outmigration from many parts of the state. Inevitably, hundreds of schools have closed in response—nearly 700 between 2012 and 2021. Without a drastic change in circumstances, officials predict a further 524,000 students will leave Golden State public schools in the next ten years, leading to even more building closures. A similar story is playing out in other states as well. A trio of Stanford University researchers, concerned over the possibility that school closures disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic students, looked at both California and national data to quantify the racial and ethnic dimension of closures. Their recent working paper suggests an outsized influence of race as a factor, but fails to take into account the positive impacts that can accrue to all students whose schools close for good reason.
The research team, led by Francis A. Pearman, II, uses data from the National Center for Educational Statistics’ Common Core of Data from 2000 to 2018 to look at school closures both in California and nationwide, focusing on the racial composition of district and charter schools which were or weren’t closed during that period. They also utilize school-level achievement statistics from Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) to build a subset of schools—mainly elementary and middle schools, both closed and not—containing at least one grade level tested annually on state assessments (grades 3 through 8) between 2008 and 2016. The big questions: Do school closures disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic students versus their White peers? And do other differences between schools—like achievement levels, enrollment patterns, and socioeconomic characteristics—drive or mitigate any disproportional impacts found?
The topline finding: California schools enrolling higher proportions of Black students were at significantly increased risk of closure relative to those enrolling fewer Black students. In schools where less than 20 percent of students are Black, fewer than 1 percent closed during the study period. Once half or more of the student body is composed of Black students, closure rates rose to 2.5 percent and exhibited a sharp incline thereafter. The same pattern manifested in the national data, but California’s rates more than doubled those nationally. Above 80 percent Black enrollment, 10 percent of California schools closed, as compared with 3.5 percent nationally. For Hispanic students, closure rates were generally low—both in California and nationally—until their share of the student population reached 80 percent, above which point roughly 2.5 percent of schools experienced closure.
In controlling for possible alternative explanations for school closures—such as differing enrollment declines, school types, poverty rates, and achievement levels—the analysts find some mitigation of the race- and ethnicity-focused disparities, but not enough to fully explain them in either Golden state or national data. In California, for instance, the odds of closure still increased by nearly 25 percent for every 10-percentage-point increase in the share of Black students—even in schools that were otherwise equivalent in terms of charter status, achievement levels, urbanicity, poverty rates, and enrollment trends, and that were situated in districts under the same level of “strain” (in terms of per-pupil expenditures, total enrollment, and level of school choice). In short, Black student enrollment appears highly predictive of which schools are more likely to close, independent of any other explanation, especially in California.
The research team recommends more analysis of these and other factors related to school closures. At minimum, they say, states should adopt policies that require school leaders to make their closure decisions data-focused, transparent, and subject to non-discrimination laws. As team member Francis Pearman told EdWeek: “Deliberate or not deliberate, [race] is showing up, and we have to be really careful about the processes that govern closures to ensure that those processes themselves are equitable.”
All of this makes sense as far as it goes, but the researchers should probably take their own advice first. One vital factor they did not consider in their analysis: the positive impacts of closures. It is noted in the paper that data from elementary school closures in Chicago and Michigan, as well as Fordham’s own research in Ohio, all indicate that many students moved to higher performing schools than the closed buildings they previously attended, and tended to have significantly higher academic gains in subsequent years. There are downsides to closures—disruption for students, possible transportation issues, and socialization with new peers among them—but any credible analysis of impacts must take into account the well-researched academic benefits that can accrue to all students whose schools close and not simply assume that closures are a universal bad. If Black and Hispanic students are indeed the primary constituents whose schools close, then all impacts should accrue to them. School closures are likely to continue—or even ramp up—in California and elsewhere. They are not automatically negative, and maximizing their positive impacts requires acknowledging and maximizing them.
SOURCE: Francis A. Pearman, II; Camille Luong; and Danielle Marie Greene, “Examining Racial (In)Equity in School-Closure Patterns in California,” Policy Analysis for California Education Working Paper (September 2023).
