Closing and Restructuring Public Schools: The Spillover Effects of Organizational Disbanding and Transformation

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 21. Schools and Classrooms 1

Abstract

This study uses concepts from organizational ecology and institutional theory to examine whether school closings and restructurings have implications for surviving schools in the surrounding school boundary. I use school-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data and School Attendance Boundary Information System to analyze how school closings impact student composition and program distribution in elementary schools that were operating in SY2010-2011. I also consider the long-term effects of being located near a school closing or restructuring and examine subsequent outcomes one and two years later. Through entropy balancing, I find in the year following a closure, schools located near a closed school are more likely to be magnet schools than those not near a closed school. Additionally, schools located near a restructured school have smaller class sizes and are more likely to have a specialized structure (as a magnet or charter school). These effects persist up to two school years beyond the initial restructuring in SY 2010-2011.

Author

• Emily Persons, Duke University