This article has been updated to reflect 2026 data and recent developments.
School closures have become a hot-button topic across the country, as parents, students, and community members continue to debate such actions by their local governments. In 2026, declining enrollment, demographic shifts, aging buildings, rising operating costs, and changing housing patterns are prompting some districts to consolidate campuses, redraw attendance boundaries, or close schools altogether. Public School Review's School Closure Risk: What Parents Should Check Before Moving examines these current pressures in greater detail.
Do closures of underperforming schools really improve the performance of students in those areas? We’ll take a closer look at two of the districts that have faced this difficult question, as well as research that may question this method as a means of raising the bar on education standards.
This video reports on proposed school closures in Columbus, Ohio.
Chicago Parents Question Closure Decisions
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faced a serious education crisis after taking office in 2011. According to numbers from Catalyst Chicago that were reported in Progress Illinois at the time, 140 of the 675 Chicago Public Schools were eligible to be shut down, based on a three-level metric that rested largely on the Illinois Scholastic Assessment Test results. All of the schools on the list were situated in communities largely populated by minority students, which further complicated the issue.
Parents rose up quickly to form a community organization that provided alternatives to closing down schools in their neighborhoods. The agenda, titled, “A Neighborhood’s Agenda for Schools,” included recommendations like hiring and training teachers from a school’s own community, adding more bilingual teachers, and hiring support staff with more mental health counselors. The organization also asked the school district to place a lower emphasis on standardized testing when it came to assessing school performance.
The community organization met with school officials to present their recommendations and discuss the school district’s plan for failing schools. However, the committee was still waiting to see if any of their suggestions might actually be used in the schools in question.
“I was present [at the meeting] along with a number of other organizations,” Joanna Brown, lead organizer for the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, told Progress Illinois. “They said, ‘You know, this is interesting,’ and all that, but we haven’t seen any follow-up yet.”
The school district subsequently moved ahead with school closures and other interventions. In 2013, Chicago carried out one of the largest mass school closure actions in U.S. history. Later research from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research examined the effects of those closures and found that students and staff experienced significant disruption. The study also found negative effects on test scores for students from closed schools, particularly in math.
In 2026, the situation in Chicago is significantly different. The Chicago Board of Education has placed a moratorium on closures, consolidations, and phase-outs of district-managed schools through the 2026-27 school year.
Parents’ earlier concerns about school closures included the possibility that some students would have to travel longer distances, sometimes through unsafe neighborhoods, to get to their new schools.
“We still have security problems, whether you keep them open or not,” Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times at the time in response to parent concerns. “That’s not an either-or choice. So, we have to work at it. But I cannot allow kids to continue in failed education systems…when there are other options available to improve education.”
Public School Review's Chicago Schools: More Than 50 Schools Face Closure provides additional historical context on the district's large-scale closure initiative.
New York Parents Protest School Closure Threat
In the early 2010s, after the New York City Department of Education put 47 schools on a potential closure list, parent protests cropped up throughout the city. Parents congregated on the steps of the Department of Education headquarters in Downtown Manhattan, waving protest signs and objecting to the closure proposals. Parents involved in the protest complained that the district allowed the schools to fail by not providing them with the necessary resources to succeed.
“They want to hold the school accountable, but at the same time, they don’t want to provide the resources,” one parent protester said at the time. “They don’t provide parent training; They don’t provide parent support to help us help our children get the education they need.”
Marc Sternberg, then deputy chancellor for the New York City Department of Education, responded that officials had held discussions with members of affected school communities and would consider community feedback in their final proposals. He also argued that a new school environment could be a better option for some students.
Subsequent research has provided more evidence about the effects of New York City's closure strategy. The Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU studied 29 low-performing high schools designated for closure between 2002 and 2008. Researchers found little positive or negative academic impact on students already enrolled during the phaseout process, but future students who had to choose other high schools generally attended higher-performing schools and experienced improved outcomes, including higher graduation rates.
Public School Review's Unions Head to Court to Stop School Closures provides additional background on the disputes surrounding New York City's school closure policies.
This video reports on school closings in the District of Columbia.
Do School Closures Work?
At the time of New York City's closure initiatives, district officials argued that school closures had a track record of success. But is this really the best approach to raise the education standard across a district?
Research from RAND Corporation, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, and Mathematica Policy Research looked closely at the issue. According to Vanderbilt University, the study found that closing low-performing schools may not benefit students as previously assumed and may result in lower performance, depending on the quality of the new school to which the student is transferred.
Researchers studied a low-performing urban school district that closed schools dealing with decreasing enrollment and low test scores. They found that students who transferred to similarly performing schools experienced declines in math and reading test scores. The data suggested that students needed access to substantially higher-performing schools for closure policies to produce better academic results.
Later evidence has reinforced the importance of what happens after a closure. The University of Chicago Consortium's research into Chicago's 2013 closures found that students from closed schools experienced lower-than-expected reading and math scores around the time of the closures, with the negative math effects persisting for several years.
New York City's experience, however, illustrates why the evidence is not entirely one-sided. The NYU Research Alliance found meaningful benefits for future students who avoided schools designated for closure and instead attended higher-performing alternatives.
These findings suggest that the question is not simply whether school closures work. The quality of the receiving schools, the transition process, and the alternatives available to students all matter.
In 2026, school closures are also increasingly connected to enrollment and financial pressures rather than academic performance alone. Public School Review's Education Funding in America (2026 Update) notes that declining enrollment can reduce funding allocations and contribute to school consolidation or closure, particularly as districts adjust to the expiration of temporary pandemic-era federal relief funding.
School closures remain one of the most controversial actions a district can take. Research continues to suggest that simply closing a struggling or under-enrolled school is not enough to improve student outcomes. When districts pursue closures, the quality of the schools receiving displaced students, the support provided during the transition, and the effects on families and communities remain central considerations.
