In this study of school closures in Detroit, the authors note that the closures were concentrated in black and brown communities. Terrance L. Green, Joanna D. Sanchez, and Andrene J.Castro note this spatial concentration of closures and point out that it typically has negative effects on students.
It reads in part:
Between 2006 and 2013, >1,200 traditional public schools were closed across 26 states in the United States.2 These closures disproportionately occurred in urban school districts that predominantly serve Black and Brown3 students, such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York City (Deeds & Pattillo, 2015; Ewing, 2018).4 In each of these districts, >100 schools have been closed in recent years (Journey for Justice, 2014). According to research, schools that serve larger populations of Black and Brown students with economic need are more likely to be closed than schools with fewer students of color, even when the schools have similar academic performances (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2017). Research also indicates that schools mainly serving Black and Brown students are closed even though closures can be detrimental on multiple levels as they affect “every part of the education system from students to teachers to the neighborhoods around the schools and the city as a whole” (Grover & van der Velde, 2016, p. 21).
Scholars who take critical perspectives link school closures to political forces, corporate interests, and the policy contexts that allow neoliberalism to take shape (Lipman, 2011; Pedroni, 2011; Stovall, 2016). The neoliberal education agendas that focus on school closures manifest through policy justifications that render closures as a positive reform mechanism. These agendas purport to remove “low-performing schools” from the “education market” through competition, thereby producing viable schooling options for families (Brummet, 2014; Engberg, Gill, Zamarro, & Zimmer, 2012). School closures are therefore rationalized as good administrative governance, a logical intervention to “failing” traditional public schools, a consequence to underutilization of space, and a fiscally responsible option for distressed districts. However, these arguments for closing schools are still made despite empirical evidence showing that closing schools does not result in large savings, especially for big-city school districts, at least in the short run, without coupling it with large-scale teacher layoffs (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2011).5
Moreover, there is an important relationship among federal, state, and local policy actors in how school closures and charter openings manifest. Federal policy actors6 create a climate for neoliberal education policies that state and local actors in turn implement. As such, federal education policies in the United States have engendered an environment for school closures and the subsequent opening of charter schools in low-income Black and Brown communities (Good, 2017; Lipman, Vaughan, & Gutierrez, 2014). Policies such as No Child Left Behind created a high-stakes accountability environment that made school closures a “commonsense” neoliberal outcome to “underperforming schools.” Under this logic, No Child Left Behind encouraged school closures through market-based school reform policies that punished schools for low performance, introduced incentives, and promoted school choice (Green, 2017; Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009). Similarly, the federal government continued to close urban public schools, while new initiatives promoted the possibility of innovation in charter schools. The Race to the Top competition prioritized school closure as one of its remedies to “underperforming schools” (Deeds & Pattillo, 2015).
At the state and local levels, neoliberal policies have also been used to justify school closures and the concurrent opening of charter schools. This has been coupled with housing, labor, and other city policies that constrain urban life for children and families of color (Ewing, 2018; Green, 2017; Lipman, 2011). For example, research suggests that closing public schools and opening charter schools in Chicago “is linked to policies that mandate dismantling public housing, limit affordable housing options, and support gentrification” (Lipman et al., 2014, p. 3). Consequently, the massive school closures in Chicago—which resulted in >50 school closures in 2013 alone—have produced racialized outcomes leaving some Black communities with few traditional public open-enrollment schools (Lipman et al., 2014).
Impacts of School Closure on Students and Communities
The impacts of school closures on student educational outcomes are neutral at best and negative in other instances (Gordon et al., 2018). Students whose schools have been closed initially experience higher absenteeism and lower test scores, which in some cases decrease over time (Engberg et al., 2012). Research in Chicago suggests, however, that students from the 50 schools that were closed in 2013 experienced long-term negative impacts on their math test scores and grade point averages (Gordon et al., 2018). Furthermore, in schools that have been closed across the United States, students have noted less voice, decreased ability to affect school policies, weaker relationships with teachers, and lower academic performance in the schools that they attended after their neighborhood schools were closed (Kirshner, Gaertner, & Pozzoboni, 2010; Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011). While most students in urban districts move to lower or equally performing schools after closure, some studies suggest that when students move to higher-performing schools, they typically experienced better attendance and test scores.7 However, the distance between high- and low-performing schools in many urban cities is so far that it prohibits some students of closed schools from attending higher-performing schools (de la Torre & Gwynne, 2009).
Additionally, the social-spatial and psychological impacts of school closure can be costly. Research indicates that school closures can destabilize communities, interrupt the lives of students and families, and cause receiving schools to become overenrolled (Gordon et al., 2018). The closure of schools can also lead to a type of social death or mourning because the connections among schools, students, families, and communities are lost (Ewing, 2018). The social impacts of school closure also include erasure of histories, student mobility issues, loss of jobs for teachers of color, and fractured school feeder patterns (Buras, 2013; Green, 2017). To compound these impacts, the psychological consequences of school closure interrupt a community’s sense of place and home (Journey for Justice, 2014).
Theoretical Framework
To frame this study, we draw on Peck and Tickell’s (2002) theorization of “rollback” and “rollout” neoliberalism. According to Peck and Tickell, neoliberalism represents “explicit forms of political management, intervention, and new modes of institution-building designed to extend the neoliberal project, to manage its contradictions, and to secure its ongoing legitimacy” (p. 396). Peck and Tickell characterize rollback neoliberalism as a type of dismantling, discreditation, and destruction of public institutions and goods. As the authors note, rollback is historically situated and represents a shift from Keynesian-welfare economics to free market economic theories characterized by marketization and deregulation. For example, rollback neoliberalism destroys public goods and institutions such as public schools, public housing, and labor protection policies (e.g., teachers’ unions and tenure; Lipman, 2013b; Moskowitz, 2017).
Conversely, the authors argue that rollout neoliberalism describes a policy logic that privileges entrepreneurial governance through new construction and consolidations. Rollout neoliberalism therefore engenders new institutions (i.e., charter schools) and policies that create markets in places where they had not previously existed, such as charter school markets in communities that once housed traditional public schools (Lipman, 2013a). Given the proliferation of charter schools in urban contexts and the ways that charter schools are marketed toward students of color, rollout neoliberalism is also imbued with racial consequences.
School closings and dispersion of communities of color tend to be correlated with gentrification and dispersion of the students whose schools were closed, as well as disruption of community institutions.
We know that disruption is bad for young people. So-called reform has callously inflicted disruption on poor black and brown students without any consideration of how the chaos would impact these vulnerable students. While schools get closed, and private charter schools, often in other parts of the city enroll the students, there is no evidence that this will result in better outcomes for minority students. After students wind up in a charter school, there is little follow up to determine that this had any benefit to the student. The main goal in many cities is to assist developers in moving poor students and their families out of areas that have a profitable potential to gentrify. We have seen this same scenario across multiple cities including Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Philly and others. Education for poor students should not be about helping developers make profit.
If you have the time, listen to this lecture from Dr. Leslie Fenwick from Howard University. I found it in NPE’s Facebook page. The first part of the lecture dispels myths about black people that are accepted as fact, and the second part discusses how privatization impacts minority communities. Dr. Fenwick makes several good points relevant to privatization and gentrification.
Here’s the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeS0FWnu-8I&fbclid=IwAR2xlr6cXaasCvnleAB3IR9tmRq7emJ6paupksZtFcnZ9t0MCKHSsHvwlh0
and no apologies from anyone at the government level for the massive chaotic upheaval in cities like Chicago where kids are known to face huge street problems due to sudden school changes: these children and their neighborhoods are simply dealt with as chess pieces in the larger profit/power game
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” –Rahm Emanuel,former Mayor of Chicago who closed 50 schools serving mostly African American children and Chief of Swearing … I mean Staff to President Obama
Emanuel is now an ABC commentator trashing Bernie. This Week with George Stepanopoulis (Feb. 23 ) Four – Rahm, George, Chris Christie and one other Republican, out of a panel of 5, selling Republican talking points.
Sanders trashing is a sport for Republicans and Democrats alike.
The purpose of privatization is to starve Main Street in order to feed the unceasing appetite of Wall Street, plain and simple. Devastating inequality isn’t just baked into the pie; it’s the main ingredient, and neoliberals have a serious eating disorder.
Why? For the same reason a dog licks his, er, you know: because he can. No one speaks up for black and brown communities when this happens to them,just as long as no one touches white schools. But sooner or later poor whites (and what’s left of middle class whites) are going to regret not speaking up when they had the chance. It’s only a matter of time before the same happens to them.
Its only a matter of time before it happens with schools,but it’s already happened on jobs.
The equivalent thing has happened to poor and blue collar formerly middle class white families on job related issues, which is why so many of them voted for Trump last time around (particularly in the economically hard hit Midwest where many factories have closed due to NAFTA and other neoliberal globalization policies pushed by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and other Democrats)
Bellwether is “touching” white schools with its new rural schools program.
In a 2019 report, Bellwether advised reformers to reach out to churches. No need to reach out to Catholic churches. The USCCB, state Catholic Conferences and Catholic Action Networks are fully on-board with parental school choice.
As a start, Steve Bannon, Leonard Leo, William Barr and conservative Catholic SCOTUS judges should be on the radar. Notre Dame (ACE), Catholic University of America, Fordham Institute and the Koch-linked Manhattan Institute are institutions that should be on the radar.
It is understandable that black and brown parents wanted better schools and out of their current ones. It is too bad that the solutions offered by charter schools only made their situation worse in most cases.
Media’s description of charter schools in Mich. – “brutal on black families”.
Howard Fuller is associated with Wisconsin’s Catholic Marquette University.
Howard Fuller is currently the star of a commercial in Wisconsin supporting vouchers. Paid for by Betsy DeVos American Federation for Children. He received millions from Waltons and Bradley Foundation to sell school choice to black families.