What happens when a school shuts down? And how do those decisions ripple through the students, families, and communities left behind?

On this episode of School’s In, Stanford Assistant Professor Francis Pearman joins us to discuss the complex and often emotional issue of school closures. We dive into why schools close, who is most affected, and how these decisions ripple through communities – especially for low-income students and students of color. Pearman covers several topics including:

• (02:21) Why do schools close?
• (06:34) How school closures affect local communities
• (08:02) Educational consequences for students
• (11:25) Are school closures fair? Equity and disproportionality
• (16:07) Financial realities and policy tradeoffs
• (19:03) Is there a better way? Alternatives and considerations

Francis Pearman is an assistant professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education. His research examines how poverty and inequality shape the life chances of children, particularly through the lens of educational opportunity and urban development. Learn more about his work on his faculty profile.

School’s In is your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights and fresh perspectives on the future of learning. Hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope, each episode dives into the latest research, innovations, and real-world challenges shaping education today.

Stanford GSE is at the forefront of education research and teacher preparation, dedicated to advancing equitable, accessible, and impactful learning experiences for all.

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When we talk about closing a school, we're not just talking about the reallocation of students to other schools in a district. We're talking about functionally changing communities themselves.

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the dean of the Graduate School of Education, and the faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning.

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed. Hello, Dan Schwartz.

Dr. Pope, good to see you. I'm gonna jump right in. So, what do you think is the hardest job in the world?

Are you fishing here? Do you want me to say dean? Do we (laughs), do you want me to say, "Dan Schwartz's job is the hardest job in the world"?

No, dean is like martinis and cigars.

Oh, oh.

It, it's easy.

(Laughs)

Uh, no, the, the, I think the answer is superintendent. School superintendent.

Oh.

I, I think this has to be the hardest job. You're very political, you're a manager, you're a leader. You're sort of walking around with two cell phones all the time.

(Laughs) Yeah.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

Oh, yes.

But they all have two cell phones. And then, you have to close schools.

Aw.

And this, this is, you die by a thousand cuts as a superintendent when you close schools. This is really a hard thing to do. And so we're, we're gonna get to speak with, uh, one of the world's experts on this. This is, uh, Professor Francis Pearman at the Graduate School of Education. He takes on great topics. You know, he has a, a great paper on how pre-kindergarten makes a difference in childhood learning. So these are big issues. Uh, school closure is another one. So thank you for joining us, Dr. Pearman.

Oh, it is my pleasure. I look forward to the discussion.

Welcome back.

Yes, that's right. You're one of the few that has survived for a second show. So, uh, so tell me why, why do we close schools?

The rationale behind school closures generally fall into one of two buckets. On the one hand, you have what are kind of broadly like budgetary-related issues, right? And you can clump enrollment-related changes in that bucket as well. Uh, right. But the idea is that one of the reasons we closed schools is because, uh, financially it is at least conceivable to believe that doing so would somehow, uh, benefit a district financially.

So right now I think there's, uh, in the Bay Area, because there's less kids and schools sort of get a formula where they get a certain amount of money, school districts based on the number of kids. And when that drops, they have a smaller budget and they close the school. Is that sort of a, a concrete instance of how this would happen?

Yeah. Oftentimes, funding is tied to enrollment or daily enrollment. If a district is serving fewer students, a district has fewer resources. But, uh, the financial sort of dimension of why a district might close a school is pretty significant. And you listen to any school closure deliberation, uh, that's happening a- around the country, and the budget will be one of the first items that's uttered as a reason. That's not the only, uh, reason that school closures come about.

Another broad bucket of items, and I should say just at the outset, I'm talking about these buckets, but oftentimes it's neither, uh, one or the other. I mean, they're, they're interrelated in, in a lot of ways. But the other set of items pertains to, uh, like achievement, uh, related issues, right? So this is, this is the idea that we don't close any school. In some cases there might be an underperforming school. And the logic being, well, we might be able to expand opportunity in a district if students going to a quote, unquote, "failing school," are able to go to, to other schools, maybe a better school. Uh, right? Now, the history behind that, the origin of that being a motivation for school closures, that really picked up steam, uh, during the No Child Left Behind era, right? Where all of a sudden underperformance became a justification, uh, for school closures.

Why wouldn't they just, like, get a new principal? Is it because the swing sets are rotting? I mean, what...

(Laughs)

No (laughs). I don't think rotting swing sets would be the reason to close a school (laughs).

Fine.

No, I think, I, no, I think you're raising a really important point. And I think what you're speaking, uh, to, or the, or what your question is raising is really about the spirit behind policy levers, the carrots that we put in place to incentivize the kinds of improvements that we desire for our schools, right? So, No Child Left Behind had a, a more punitive stance that is, uh, you know, we have to move people in the direction that they need to by kind of creating more consequences. Uh, really more significant consequences, right? And so, uh, this is where, uh, the high stakes testing became really predominant in our, uh, way of thinking about schools and school system improvement, right?

So two, uh, were school closures, right, a part of that conversation. So all of a sudden we can improve schools by holding, uh, as a potential consequence, if you don't improve schools, then you are at risk of closure, right? So we have these kind of two really big ways that districts think about justifying school closures. On the one hand, we have districts that are facing increasing budgetary pressures. And as a result of that, school closures are, in theory, right, are one way to address that. On the other hand, we have districts that are really interested in improving educational performance, and in some cases, doing so that is, uh, pursuing, uh, improvement of school performance might, uh, entail closing this or that school in, in the district.

Can I just ask one quick question? Because I just wanna delineate. In my head, I've also heard where like someone else takes over the management of the school because it's not doing well. That's different from closing a school, right? I just wanna point that out.

School closure, the, like, the phenomena, the issue, the patterns, they're very complicated, and there are different versions of school closures. The work that I'm gonna summarize today, uh, refers to a particular brand of school closures. And that's permanent school closures.

Okay.

That is the shuttering of a school, not on a temporary basis, as we saw during the pandemic. It is not a takeover, per se, where the administration or the leadership changes from one authority to another, but in fact, the permanent closure of that school altogether.

Okay, thanks for clarifying. Because I know, I know that can be confusing.

You know, the, it's a big thing to just completely close the school that your kid's been walking to.

And I think what is important just to emphasize is the role that schools play in communities. When we think about schools, it's easy to kind of narrowly focus on their, uh, educational aims, right? What are schools to do? They're, they're to teach our, our children. And that's an important role that schools play. But schools play a whole host of other sort of purposes within communities, uh, right? They're sites of, of networks. They're sites of support. They're sites of shucks, like historical memory, right, across time, across generations. In many communities, they're institutions that are relied upon for reasons beyond sort of the educational pursuits that we typically ascribe to them, right? So when we talk about closing a school, we're not just talking about the reallocation of students to other schools in a district. We're talking about functionally changing communities themselves, right? And the institutions that serve those communities. And in many cases, that have served those communities for many years, uh, right? Sometimes (laughs), as I mentioned, for generations.

What are like a good and bad consequence? Just as an example. So there's, there's probably a cluster of bad consequences, and then there's possible good consequences that, and people are sort of trading off the calculus between these two.

Let's start with the good, right? Best case scenario, a lower performing school is closed and educational opportunity increases. That is, uh, a child who previously went to, uh, underperforming school, now goes to a school that is better able to meet that student's needs. Uh, achievement goes up, attendance goes up, that, that student experiences a more vibrant kind of social, uh, network at this new school. And that student experiences an enriched trajectory because of that closure.

Now, on the flip side, uh, right (laughs), is the, are the cons, the potential concerns? And I should note that the negative consequences is, is r- r- really the thing that has been resounding, uh, most in the empirical research over the last, uh, several years. Uh, perhaps, uh, you know, last, last decade or so. Here's what we know. Despite the possibility of, uh, some of those improved educational opportunities that I just talked about, on average, what we see is that when students experience a closure, there is an immediate negative impact on their academic trajectories, right?

So they experience an, uh, an immediate decline in, in achievement, they experience lower attendance rates, there's, uh, some evidence in the last year or so that suggested that there's actually an increase likely of disciplinary problems that students experience after they experience a school closure and go to a new school. So a lot of this emerging, empirical work that asks this very question that you've posed, which is, "Well, what should we expect?" Well, the work is pretty consistent on this point, that there are, uh, at the very least some immediate downside consequences that we need to be focused on mitigating.

So here's a story. This is a little tangential, but not too much. So I was raised in Pacific Palisades, which was ravaged by fires. And, and I'm watching a news report and, uh, the news reporter's talking, and I suddenly realize, in the background, my high school is on fire.

Hmm.

Yeah.

And at that moment, I realized this is gonna tear the fabric of this community, right? To lose that school. So, so is that another downside of this, that the school's gone and it plays a, a significant role in the community?

Even if it wasn't on fire, just sh- shuttering a school, right? All those memories.

Yes.

All the... Like the, we used to go to their park there to walk the dog. Like schools do more than just teach kids. I know I've, I've, I know you've said that before, Francis. So yeah, there's like emotional issues associated.

Yeah, yes, there are, uh, memories, there's community that's established in and through school life. You think about alumni networks and what it would mean to lose this space that you go back to every year. I do wanna respond though. I think the, the case you raised, Dan, is a really interesting one. And that is where a natural disaster, uh, shuts down a school. And I'm not, uh, doing a grieving, uh, Olympics, right? But we can think about contrasting a natural disaster that winds up resulting in the closure of a school, uh, versus the closure of a school that is really, at its heart, a political matter, right? A matter where individuals didn't just by chance go to a school that was located in a fire zone, right? Or a gust of wind blew flames to where a school was inflamed and subsequently had to close. But in fact, many closure (laughs) decisions, right, are deliberate. That is, on balance, we have looked at all the possible decisions, all the possible scenarios, and we've decided that your school is the one that we should close.

Are school closures fair? Like, this is a tough calculus. What, what's the damage to closing the school versus moving the kids to a more positive... Is it the case that there's certain kinds of schools that get closed more than others?

Yeah. So, this, this is a, a question that I've spent a lot of time, uh, grappling with, thinking about and studying. If we consider closures a disruption and kind of fit that within this other bucket of other disruptions that we know are harmful for students' trajectories, if it is a disruption, then an important question is, well, who gets rup- disrupted more frequently, right? Are there subgroups that experience that disruption more than others? And if there are, then we have to ask critical questions of, well, is there like a reason behind that that? Like, maybe there are disproportionalities, but maybe there's a reason why that makes sense, right? And so, to your question, closures are, in fact, highly disproportionate. Closures are far more likely to happen in low-income communities. They're far more likely to happen to schools that disproportionately serve, uh, low-income students, students of color, in particular, Black students. So from a disruption standpoint, the students most likely (laughs) to experience the disruption are the very students that we know oftentimes show up to school with the greatest needs.

Is it because they're the, the least able to self-advocate for themselves? Or I, I, or is it because we just don't like minorities? Like what, what?

Well, wait. So I could see there, there, there's a, there's an implication of potential racism. And I'm not denying that. I could also see someone saying, "Wait, Francis just told us that if we have low attendance that affects the money, the, the, the schools in these neighborhoods have less money. It's harder to get teachers to teach in those..." Like, it's almost like a con, confluence of reasons, right, Francis?

That's absolutely right. So as I mentioned, we've shown that schools serving minoritized populations are more likely to close. Well, why might that be the case? I mean, you mentioned one, maybe this is, maybe this is just a discrimination story, right? Another quite reasonable explanation might be that, uh, well, these schools are also maybe the schools that are experiencing the greatest amount of de-enrollment or under-enrollment. Maybe these schools are also schools that, uh, historically underperform, uh, other schools, right? And then we've mentioned earlier about reasons, justifications for closures. Those two are oftentimes used as justification to close this or that school, and this or that school just so happened to oftentimes be Black and brown schools.

So an important empirical question is, okay, well, how much of the disproportionality is in fact accounted for by those factors? This is why I love being an academic. This is why I love being a researcher, because we can ask that very question. And this is a, a piece, uh, just published in Harvard Educational Review, which documented the extent to which disproportionality and closures existed across the country. And then secondarily, asked the question of, "Well, to what extent does that dis, is that disproportionality accounted for by these traditional explanations?" And what we find is that even after accounting for achievement differences, even after accounting for changes or differences in enrollment patterns at the school. Looking at two schools in the same districts, right? Accounting for all of those factors, a school that simply has greater shares of, in this particular case, Black students, right? Is more likely to close. A school that disproportionately has minoritized populations of other stripes like Latinx, high poverty, are more likely to close even accounting for those factors, right?

And now, that, those factors, enrollment and achievement account for some of the difference, right? I mean, don't get me wrong, that that accounts for some of it, but it's not the whole story, right? So it raises some other really important questions, uh, certainly questions that I'm, I'm asking in my work right now, which are largely of the political variety, right? Uh, 'cause your, your point, Dr. Pope, when we think about an inconvenience, uh, right, the things that we want to stop from happening, oftentimes it's the folks who have the most power that prevent that thing from happening, especially when it's a kind of distributed resource. That is, uh, it's ipsative. If one person gets it, another person doesn't, right?

We oftentimes think of that in the good sense, which is like some people get access to a good, uh, there's only 12 seats in an advanced class, 12 students get it. And, and if I get it, that means the student doesn't get it. You can also think about it in a negative way, right? So if a, if there's a school closure that has to happen, one school closure that has to happen, if you can avoid that closure, then somebody else gets it, right? So a lot of this, um, and this is where a lot of my sort of evolving theory and thinking around closures, uh, really starts to coalesce is, uh, this is a deeply political matter.

Very good.

So, Francis, as we've been having this conversation, it just keeps going through my mind, this must be the very, very last possible solution that people think of, right? Like, why would you, why would you not think to like cut from the budget, maybe elim an assistant superintendent or something, I mean, what? Maybe that's not enough money, maybe this is very naive of me, but like, I'm assuming this is the last thing someone wants to do, and the only reason they're doing it is because they absolutely have to. And is there a, a way that you can talk about that decision?

One of the first like interesting findings I, I came across in some of this, like national school closures patterns and trends work, was that mass closures and mass layoffs are orthogonal to one another. That just means, there is no association between districts that fire a bunch of folks and districts that close a bunch of schools, right? So these are, these are thought of in terms of, uh, the practical way in which districts are being run as like separate ways to achieve some sort of budgetary balance. Um, so in other (laughs) words, school closures oftentimes happen in the absence of any sort of personnel layoffs, right? And in fact, we've seen more and more instances where closures are actually part of the policy is an a- assurance that, uh, district personnel don't lose their jobs, uh, teachers don't lose their jobs, right? Which is understandable, right? If we're talking about the disruption and minimizing (laughs) disruption, right, on relevant stakeholders? You know, those policies can be important.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. When a school closes, all those teachers lose the job, no?

No, no, not, not always, right? Teachers can be reassigned, right? And remember, I mean, we're talking about, you know, arguably the most, uh, powerful union in this country. These are teacher, these are teacher unions, right? So it's not as easy as, "Okay, we close the school and we lay off the teachers." So I think there's, there's important, uh, sort of considerations of the ways that in fact, when we close the school, we may be able to save on particular expenses, particular line items, but some line, not line items, don't go away. What oftentimes people forget is that additional line items might now, uh, appear, uh, right? So you close a school, perhaps it saves money on a kind of building expense, uh, but now maybe you have new transportation costs.

Yeah, you're driving kids farther, right?

You're driving kids farther. These students have to go to other schools. And many schools, especially in places where, where districts are being very kind of careful about the number of vacant seats, right? Or minimizing vacant seats. Oftentimes this means schools that actually have to build new facilities to accommodate additional students. Uh, right? So if a school all of a sudden has to enroll another hundred students, that school has to build.

That's insane. Francis, that's insane (laughs).

Yeah, there's a whole host of financial sort of implications that rarely are sort of foregrounded. Uh, and when they're not foregrounded, districts are sort of surprised three, four years down the line and they're like, "Wait a minute, I thought we were gonna save money, but in fact we didn't save much at all, right? And, and we just made a whole part of our community quite angry."

I would like to know if there's any way to do this that's fair. Given that there's going to be those in power who, and want to have certain outcomes, is, is there some way to get that out of it? And I think the, the goal is everybody does better in equitable ways.

Right.

I'm, I'm guessing that's the goal, right? Is that-

Yeah.

... if you, if you're closing a school, all the kids end up doing better and you're choosing which schools to close on equitable grounds.

That's right. So the question of what does a good school closure process look like? If we assume that a closure is a necessary must. Now, my comments I just mentioned kind of raise issue with that assumption that being perhaps there are alternative ways to balance a budget if balancing the budget was the sort of the North Star in this decision. But if we assume for a minute that a closure is a necessary must for a district, then there are a whole host of (laughs) questions about process. How you'd close a school or close a set of schools in a way that is in fact equitable, right? That is in fact aware of the varying needs that different subgroups of students have. And there have been thoughtful efforts along these very lines.

You know, a couple themes that, that come up, one has to do with, uh, a really critical attention on receiving schools. Uh, right? So it's one thing to talk about the closure of a school, right? It's another thing to talk about where those students go. You know, I mentioned earlier when I was summarizing the impacts, the academic impacts. Whereas, on, on average, we're seeing sort of immediate declines in academic performance. Again, on average. The instances where we actually see some positive academic gains are when students go on to attend higher performing schools. So they're, they close their school and they go on to attend a higher performing school.

Now, what's remarkable about that is one would think, well, isn't that kind of the point? Like, isn't that like what everybody's saying is like, should happen? No, that does not happen. That, that actually is the, is the rare case. Oftentimes, students not only don't go to better schools, oftentimes students may wind up going to even lower performing schools on the back end of a, of a closure.

Oh, how pissed off were parents about that one?

No, that's horrible. This whole story is horrible.

Yeah, this is, I can see why the superintendents get-

Right.

... get taken down.

So, so these kinds of assurances are logistically very challenging. But my argument (laughs) is always, okay, well, if we're talking about disruption, all of those complicated logistical challenges become the necessary part of this conversation. And those kinds of assurances, I think of recently, we've seen efforts to build in assurances for staff and teachers and administrators. We need to be thinking about those same assurances at the student level. And we've talked a moment a, ago about some of the downsides associated with, you know, experiencing a closure and the new expenses that might arise. We also, uh, there's, you know, I've done work on this part as well, which is about the funding side, right? So what we also (laughs) see is there are funding changes that happen as a result of closures, right?

So when, as I mentioned, high poverty schools, more likely to close, schools serving minoritized populations, high need populations. Title 1 funding that goes to a district, oftentimes goes down as a result of closures, right? This is one of those like obvious ones that's like, oh yeah, of course that would happen. If you close high poverty schools, Title 1 funding goes down, right? So we're talking about, uh, in that case, a mechanism or a pathway by which opportunity is in fact actually decreasing somewhat if we're talking about just pure dollars, right?

Not to mention, going back to this dollars and cents component here. We also know that a community that experiences a closure, a district might actually lose students as a result of that closure. So districts, this whole like loop cycle where decreases in enrollment increase the likelihood of closure, that closure can in turn spin back into the downward spiral and actually facilitate even more out-migration for the district.

You know, listening to the complexity of this, I think you could start a consulting firm.

(Laughs)

That like goes to school districts and helps them think about the, these sort of trade-offs and the Excel sheet and show up-

I was gonna go even further and say everything you just said, why would anyone close the school at this point? Like, it clearly is not the answer. Have you seen any positive, like as you, as you advise people, would you ever say this is, "Yeah, it's a tough decision, but here's the way to do it"? Or would you just say, "Hey, avoid it at all costs"?

That's a great question, and I've been involved both from a empirical, uh, theoretical perspective. I've also been deeply enmeshed in some of the, uh, some of the school district decision-making around school closures. All from the purpose of, look, I, I, I care a whole lot about our school systems. I care a whole lot about our school systems serving particular communities better than they have in the past, uh, right? And, uh, as a result of that, I, I have lent my, uh, insight, my, uh, you know, toolkit, so to speak, to helping sort of aid in these discussions. There have been, over the last five or six years, there are far more cases in which a school closure decision has gone awry than one that has successfully been, uh, completed, uh, right?

And understandably so, a lot of that is the, the deeply political nature within which school closure decisions are made and the consequences of those decisions for students and communities. When a neighborhood loses its school, what does that mean for the lifeblood of that community? What does that mean for civic engagement in that community moving forward? What does it mean to be a citizen of a place where your beloved neighborhood institution is, in fact, uh, precarious? Is, in fact, uh, not necessarily gonna be around for your children, right? These are fundamental shifts in how we think about social service provision at the community level, right?

So to your point, I do think that there are ways that district, I'll call it, right-sizing, can be done. I think it's important to think about closures as one possible decision within a broader set of decisions whereby a district attempts to right-size itself. I'm quite critical, and been studying this for some, some time. And a lot of times folks are like, "Well, Professor Pearman, you just, like, we got declining enrollment, we got, you know, this budget shortfalls. Of course you like, oh, you're saying we can't close schools." That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that we need to have a broader conversation about the kinds of opportunities that we're trying to embed in our communities, and the ways in which the decisions we're making about closing schools, uh, the decisions that we're making about who we're allowing to go to school where, changes the geography of opportunity across the United States, right? So when we close a school along with those, uh, considerations, we also need to be asking ourselves, what opportunities remain open for those communities and for the students who once attended that school?

This is tough, right? Dan, you've been listening to all this. Do you have a takeaway?

It is tough. It, it's so fraught, right? I, it's just so fraught. It's like the perfect word for this. And the fact that it becomes politically charged makes it difficult. The thing that I keep thinking about is this is s- such a place where research could matter, right? And, and the place to do that research is a university, right? Because all these different forces and vectors and different levels of analysis from communities to budgets, this is sort of what universities are good at.

At the same time, decisions by the university, when they go into this incredibly politicized world, it becomes very complicated. I do think that the growing evidence that closing schools is almost a coin flip, whether it's good or bad, is important. And then suddenly people will step back and say, "What are some other alternatives here?" Et cetera. But yeah, the thing I keep walking away with, this is fraught, it's really complicated. It's what universities are really good at, but it's so fraught, it's perilous.

Francis, if you had to sum up one lesson you wanted listeners to take away from this, what would it be?

Closing schools is hard.

(Laughs)

(Laughs)

Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Francis, for being here. Really, really learned a lot about the difficulties of all this. And thank you listeners for joining this episode of School's In. We would love for you to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

I'm Dan Schwartz, I am dean of the Graduate School of Education, and I will never close any of our programs ever.