Jan Resseger does not title her post “The Futility of School Closings.” She calls it “Considering School Closures as Philadelphia’s Empty Germantown High School Faces Sheriff’s Sale.” I inserted “futility,” because that is what I see as I read the books and studies she cites.
I am persuaded by books like Eve Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard (Chicago) and by Shani Robinson’s None of the Above (Atlanta) that the primary purpose of school closings is to gentrify low-income neighborhoods, push out poor black people, and open charters to lure white middle-class families. Chicago lost 200,000 black people from 2000 to 2016. Coincidence?
Read Jan’s great post and see what you think.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This post confirms what most teachers already knew. Disruption and school closures are harmful to students. One study concluded school closure is “a high-risk/low-gain strategy that fails to hold promise with respect to either student achievement or non-cognitive well-being.” The fact that more poor minority students are unfairly impacted by closures is no accident when test scores are the primary driver of closures. Some Penn researchers also found the when disrupted students had to travel further to schools, they were more likely to be absent and become discipline problems. Logic should tell us that disruption is not good for young people, but market based education makes money for a favored few by creating anti-social disruption.
The irony of Germantown High School, a magnificent granite and marble structure, a reminder of the gilded age, is rumored to be of interest to a developer that wants to build a shopping mall on the site. With on-line shopping expanding all over the country, many shopping malls are closing, and the real estate goes on the chopping block.
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I am not happy to learn about the 200,000 loss of black citizens, but I am not surprised. I have studied the census results in St. Louis from 2000, and 2010, and there is one figure I found especially surprising…..and I wonder if the same ratio is happening in Chicago. St. Louis’ population dropped from 348,000 in 2000, to 319,000 in 2010. (reportedly, another 11 thousand have been lost since 2010.) Out of the 29,000 lost, 12,401 were white–I am not sure how they can count them—and 21,106 were black. (adds up to 33,000?) the overall percentage losses were almost 12% of the black population, and 8% were white. (mixed races and asians accounted for plus numbers). The number that I found most surprising………the female loss was 19,500, the male loss was only 9,397. Would that be because of poverty levels, single parents, (the children do not pay a lot of taxes)….The things done to St. Louis public schools and the children in them were terrible in that decade…………the public schools have dropped from 35,000 to 23,000—–charter students now number 12,000. Scores remain dismal in both, with a few exceptions…..Is there anything significant in the loss of twice as many females as Males? Are gender numbers comparisons available from the Chicago situation?
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“I am persuaded by books like Eve Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard (Chicago) and by Shani Robinson’s None of the Above (Atlanta) that the primary purpose of school closings is to gentrify low-income neighborhoods, push out poor black people, and open charters to lure white middle-class families.”
This is what I’ve seen here in NYC, going on two decades.
Add to that the “Domino Effect”:
PS YYY is rated as “Failing”. “Experts” (not) are sent in by Upper Admin to help the failing school so that they won’t have to close. This does not alleviate the situation. Even real experts would have a very difficult time solving the problems of poverty and violence that are so prevalent within the inner-city neighborhood that this school is located.
The school is eventually closed and replaced by one or more charter schools that only accept a small percentage of the original schools’ kids. Class sizes have been reduced from 35 to 15. No special ed. No discipline problems. Strong parental involvement mandatory. No “C” or below students. Sounds somewhat “ok” on the surface for the “lucky ones”…
But:
The “castoffs” are forced to go to a neighboring school that is already overcrowded and inadequately staffed and funded. But not “Failing”. They’ve been working hard and staying above water. But the influx of new kids is too much of a strain and the school ends up on both the “Failing” and “Persistently Dangerous” list (new kids are in rival gang territory now or had to pass through rival territory to get the school) (big problem in Chicago when the mayor closed 50 schools on the same day).
Neighboring school has the same group of “Experts” come to help “fix” it.
Etc…..
This was a huge problem in New York City under mayor Bloomberg. And it’s still in effect today both here and in other cities. My belief is gentrification is a very powerful driving force, but I also think it’s part of an overall plan to weaken public education and, eventually, replace it with a private, non union, profit driven model.
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