Chapter 2: School Closure in Strained Cities: Implications for Racial Equity in U.S. Education

Urban school districts are subject to the well-documented challenges of concentrated poverty, racial segregation, uneven economic development, community disinvestment, collective trauma, limited political capital, and countless other social ills (Anyon, 2005; Condron & Roscigno, 2003; Dixson, Royal, & Henry, 2014; Hinze-Pifer & Sartain, 2018; Howard, 2008; Orfield, Ee, Frankenberg, & Siegel-Hawley, 2016). As a result, many city schools operate in contexts of pervasive resource strain, which delimit the educational and occupational prospects of youth. In recent years, pronounced social strain in urban communities has resulted in more public school closures. Between 1999 and 2013, for example, government agencies across the United States closed approximately 24,000 public schools, uprooting on average 255,000 students each year (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2013). Although shuttering schools is not exclusive to urban school districts, rates of closure nearly doubled in large central cities since the late 1990s (NCES, 2013b). From 2000 to 2010, approximately 30% of school districts in large and mid-size U.S. cities closed public schools, with an average of 11 school closures per district (Engberg, Gill, Zamarro, & Zimmer, 2012, p. 189).