The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has consistently believed that all schools should be held accountable for the performance of their students and that any school that isn’t performing should be closed.
But closing a school can be difficult, and the impact of any closure ripples through the community and the lives of the students. Some question whether the disruption is worth it. In the traditional public school system, the urge to avoid this disruption almost always carries the day, and in the rare event that a school is closed, it’s usually due to persistent dwindling enrollment. Fortunately, we have emerging research that sheds light on the effect of school closures on students who attended those schools.
The Fordham Institute has conducted a study that measures the achievement trends of nearly twenty-three thousand students who attended one of 198 urban schools in Ohio—both traditional and public charter schools—that closed between 2006 and 2012. With the use of student-level longitudinal data provided by the Ohio Department of Education, the Fordham researchers were able to determine how the students from the closed schools fared after they were moved to a new school. The study found that school closures had a positive impact on students, who saw substantial learning gains three years after their schools closed. Students from the traditional public schools that closed achieved learning gains in both reading and math, and students from charter schools achieved learning gains in math.
Operating under a limited amount of time—usually from three to eight years—to meet performance targets is an integral part of the charter school equation and has been from the beginning. This study suggests that traditional public schools and their students would likely benefit from a similar approach.
Susan Pendergrass is the senior director for research and evaluation at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
