Closing and Opening Schools: The Association between Neighborhood Characteristics and the Location of New Educational Opportunities in a Large Urban District

Abstract

ABSTRACT:New charter schools can potentially provide disenfranchised students with enhanced academic opportunities while simultaneously serving as neighborhood anchors that reinforce neighborhood socioeconomic growth. However, for both of these arguments to be true, charter schools would have to replace low-performing public schools in currently disadvantaged, but revitalizing, neighborhoods. Using data from the Chicago Public Schools, the Common Core, and the Census, we examine the neighborhood and school-level factors that account for where elementary schools closed and opened in Chicago during the late 1990s and 2000s. We find that schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to close, but only because these were also underperforming and under-enrolled schools. After controlling for educational demand, new schools were more likely to open in neighborhoods that showed signs of socioeconomic revitalization and declining proportions of white residents.