Each week, “Answer Key” aims to help families by responding to an important question about education and schools in Greater Houston. If you have a question for us to answer, please email us at education@houstonlanding.org or fill out the form at the end of this article.
This week’s question:
What do we know about the impact of school closures on students and school districts?
As more school districts in the Houston region consider shuttering schools, the impact of closures on students, families and communities will be widely felt.
School closures affect student performance, disrupt family routines, add to commutes to campus and leave communities without a neighborhood pillar.
Researchers over the past few decades have tracked the size of these impacts throughout the country, offering some perspective on the short- and long-term effects, though the research hasn’t been extensive.
Here’s what we know about the results of schools shutting down, which figures to become more common in the Houston area as enrollment declines, budget deficits, charter school growth and other factors heighten the possibility of wider closures.
How do school closures affect student performance?
Across the nation, researchers have found a mixture of results when it comes to test scores, the most common measure of evaluating the impact of closures on learning.
Generally, researchers have found that, on average, students transferring to a school with higher test scores ultimately improve their scores. But if the student goes to a school with similar ratings, the impact typically will be small or negative due to the disruption of changing campuses. A student moving to a lower-rated school typically sees a significant drop in test scores.
A 2016 analysis by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research reached similar conclusions when reviewing the impact of 27 school closures in Houston ISD between 2003 to 2010.
Their findings showed HISD students, on average, transferred from closed schools to campuses that were somewhat higher-performing in math and reading. However, students only saw improvement in their scores if they transferred to high-performing campuses, something few students did.
School administrators often note that small schools can’t offer many specialized programs, so closures could result in more opportunities at newer, larger campuses.
What about the communities students live in?
It’s difficult to quantify the impact of school closures on communities from a research perspective, but the effects are real, said Deven Carlson, associate director for education and a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.
“We’ve seen it in city after city that has shuttered schools: the community doesn’t want to see those schools shuttered,” Carlson said. “It serves as a focal point. A point of pride. There’s a long history of families attending those schools.”
Families also face additional disruptions to their routines and school relationships when students are forced to move schools. In Aldine ISD, many parents had concerns about transportation to new schools, some of which were located multiple miles away from their homes.
Do school closures save districts money?
Yes, though the amount of savings typically doesn’t close large budget deficits.
Generally, schools can cut some employee positions and save on overhead costs, such as building maintenance and utilities.
But a 2011 Pew Charitable Trust study of six large, urban districts that closed 20-plus schools each found that the savings were “relatively small in the context of big-city school-district budgets, with the largest savings achieved when closings were combined with large-scale layoffs.”
A 2019 performance review of HISD by the Texas Legislative Budget Board estimated the savings per campus at that time ranged from $500,000 to $2 million, depending on the size of the school. While those figures are likely higher now due to inflation, they’d still represent a tiny fraction of HISD’s $2.2 billion budget.
School districts can see a larger one-time financial benefit if they sell the property that housed a closed school, but many districts struggle to sell or lease those properties, the Pew Charitable Trust researchers found.
Will more Houston-area school districts consider school closures?
Most local districts have relatively steady or growing enrollment.
Several districts, however, are dealing with budget deficits largely tied to trends that show no signs of reversing, including declining birth dates and increasing school choice options for families. They include Aldine, Alief, Houston and Spring ISDs — all of which have closed or floated the possibility of closing schools.
Carlson, the Oklahoma professor, said districts need to plan out and communicate the process of closing a school and moving students to a new campus.
“You would hope that these districts are doing it with a long game of improving these students’ outcomes and these students’ educational experiences,” he said. “But I think oftentimes they get so caught up in the blowback to the decision to close the schools that it’s hard for them to stay focused on communicating the potential upsides and plans of what’s next for families.”
Angelica Perez is a general assignment reporter for the Landing’s education team. Find her @byangelicaperez on Instagram and X, or reach her directly at angelica@houstonlanding.org.
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