This report provides an extensive analysis based on the most comprehensive dataset ever assembled for school closure research, including 1,522 low-performing schools that were closed across 26 states between 2006 and 2013. The report finds that even when holding constant academic performance, schools were more likely to be closed if they enrolled higher proportions of minority and low-income students. It also finds test score declines, relative to the comparison group, for two groups of students displaced by closures: those who transferred to schools with a prior record of relatively lower test-score performance and those who transferred to schools with equivalent past test-score performance. The slightly less than half of students who transferred to higher performing schools showed academic improvement relative to their matched peers. In general, although the reviewers found this to be a careful and rigorous study, they see a few missed opportunities. First, the report’s focus on some tenuous analyses (involving pre-closure transfers) obscures its most important findings – disproportionality in school closures and inadequate numbers of higher quality receiving schools, leading to performance declines for most. Second, the reviewers are concerned about statistical modeling choices and matching challenges that may threaten the validity of subgroup analyses (charter school students). Finally, the reviewers would have liked to see the report acknowledge the inescapable moral dimensions of school closure: The communities most likely to be negatively affected are unlikely to have participated in closure decisions.

A recent report found a general increase in test scores of students displaced from closed urban schools in Ohio, who were disproportionately African American and low-income. Students displaced from closed charter schools showed gains in math but not reading, relative to students from non-closed schools; students displaced from district schools showed gains in math and reading. Gains associated with closure were greater for students who transferred to “higher-performing schools”—those with higher test scores. Overall achievement growth in receiving schools, however, decreased in the year that they accommodated displaced students. Although the finding that displaced students showed improvement in test scores is encouraging, several factors limit the study’s policy implications. The report itself cautions that the potential for test-score gains depends on the availability of higher-performing schools for displaced students, a condition often unmet. Forty percent of students in closed schools transferred to schools that were not higher performing. Also, because demographic data were not reported about the receiving schools, an alternative explanation—that displaced students benefited from transferring to schools with less economic and racial segregation—was not explored. School closure also raises moral and political questions about democratic decision-making and community voice.