Rescue Mission: The Effects of a School Closure on Displaced Students

• In Event: When Education Policy Backfires and What We Can Learn

Abstract

In early 2006, the Riverside School Board voted to close Jefferson High School – an institution that had served the urban district’s Black and Latino populations for more than a century. Jefferson’s 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students were instructed to transfer to other schools in the district to complete high school. In the years preceding the closure, Jefferson had been repeatedly rated unsatisfactory based on results from state achievement tests; in 2005, fewer than 6% of its students were proficient in math and fewer than 9% were proficient in writing. In light of Jefferson students’ academic struggles, the school district touted the closure as a “rescue mission” – displaced students would have the opportunity to relocate to higher performing schools and would therefore stand a better chance of progressing academically and graduating on time.

Our research, based on quantitative analyses of academic outcomes and qualitative analyses of student experiences, suggests the closure had the opposite effect for most students. Displaced students’ test scores – rising prior to the closure – declined in the years that followed it, widening the already sizeable achievement gap between Jefferson students and their district peers. Graduation and dropout trends followed suit. Displaced students were more than twice as likely to exit early and 31% less likely to graduate on time, compared to similar students who had attended Jefferson prior to the closure. In isolation, declines in test scores could be cast as students simply protesting the test-based accountability policies that contributed to Jefferson’s closure. In concert, however, negative trends across academic outcomes suggest that for the students immediately impacted, this policy decision intensified academic challenges rather than easing them.

Qualitative analyses focused on students’ interpretations of the closure and their management of the transition that followed. Student perspectives are critical in closure research, because they illuminate the mechanisms that drive unintended consequences and they suggest some proactive steps districts might take to boost the odds that a school closure will benefit the students it displaces. Generally, students affected by the Jefferson closure felt less connected to peers and adults in their new schools and expressed concern that they were not receiving the same level of individualized academic support they received at Jefferson. To displaced students, the closure seemed like an externally imposed punishment for low achievement, and many students felt stigmatized at their new schools. Three lessons may be drawn from these patterns. First, students displaced by a closure should be connected with teachers or support staff at their new schools who can provide academic guidance. Second, a school closure can be jarring for a community, so students and parents should be included in a robust democratic decision-making process. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, students should be relocated to demonstrably higher achieving, not over-crowded, schools – institutions with the capacity to support displaced students’ academic progress as they navigate a difficult transition.

Authors

• Matthew Newman Gaertner, SRI Internatinal

• Ben R. Kirshner, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Kristen Margaret Pozzoboni, San Francisco State University