By Danielle M. Greene-Bell and Francis A. Pearman, II
A less appreciated aftershock of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which recently celebrated its seventieth anniversary, was that its desegregation policies led to mass closures of schools that primarily served Black Americans. Today, school closures continue to ricochet across the nation. Roughly two percent of all public schools in the United States will have their doors shuttered by school districts or state governments annually. On average, that amounts to one thousand schools closed per year, impacting hundreds of thousands of students. Closures evoke strong feelings in surrounding communities with many students, families, journalists, and academics alike declaring that majority Black schools remain under assault.
From there emerges the question at the heart of our work: Which schools are most likely to be closed nationwide thus far in the twenty-first century and why?
With the passing of the federal K-12 education legislation No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, districts nationwide began engaging more aggressively in punitive reformations to respond to ‘failing’ schools. Persistently low academic achievement began to be met with seismic changes: privatization, charter refashioning, administrative restructuring, or even closure. In the aftermath of NCLB’s implementation, the threat of closure gained traction as a scare-tactic for improving educational outcomes in struggling schools. Many empty buildings were left in NCLB’s wake, thereby signaling that the schools and, by extension, the people within them were incapable of repair as they previously stood. Further, beyond NCLB, budgetary constraints or low academic performance are typically cited as justification by districts for closures, but advocates have continued to argue that these decisions unfairly target communities of color, particularly schools with large shares of Black students.
Historically, education has been a perpetually embattled site for Black Americans seeking to exercise autonomy away from the overreaching forces of white supremacy, and we see the fight for the right to keep the doors of schools open in the twenty-first century to be no exception. All the same, there are those who narrate a post-racial society that avoids interrogating the influence of race and Blackness on factors that contribute to school closure decisions. Therefore, to answer our central question, we examined school closure patterns across the United States along with purportedly “race-neutral” explanations for them, including enrollment patterns and trends and school-level achievement differences. This was an effort to better analyze data to see if there is support for researchers, districts, and state actors who confidently rule out anti-Black bias in the nationwide project of school closure.
Ultimately, we placed our results within the contexts of the frameworks of BlackCrit and QuantCrit (what we refer to as “BlackQuantCrit”) to suggest: 1) there will always be reasons other than race that are given for why schools with majority Black student populations are those most likely closed, but that does not mean that anti-Black motive and impact are absent; and 2) that previous malevolent intent based on socio-historical treatment of Blacks in this country (i.e., forced poverty, environmental terrorism, neglect, etc.) have created the circumstances under which schools with majority Black populations must close. Regional studies have already indicated that it is Black children and their communities who often bear the brunt of displacement from and dispossession of their schools. The burden carried by descendants of formerly enslaved Africans and others from the African diaspora, partially experienced in our continued displacement and dispossession, is both common and long standing.
Overall, we sought to advance research on the inequities associated with school closures during the twenty-first century in the United States. Nationally, we find that there is a case to be made for legitimating present-day fears that schools may be slated to close based on who the school serves–particularly, as it relates to the race of the students enrolled. Race, racism, and anti-Blackness are complex and, as society continues to evolve, are difficult to encapsulate. As such, researchers must continue to explore how educational policies are shaped by and shape the displacement and dispossession of Black children, particularly as it relates to educational reform strategies like school closures.
About the Authors
Danielle M. Greene-Bell, PhD is the Chief Engagement Officer of Richmond Public Schools in Richmond, Virginia and an independent scholar whose research focuses on the social context of education, where she explores teaching cultures and language practices within K-12 public schools that have majority African American students, faculty, and staff.
Francis A. Pearman, II, is an assistant professor of education in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research focuses on how race, poverty, and inequality shape the life chances of children.
They are the authors of “Racialized Closures and the Shuttering of Black Schools” in the Summer 2024 issue of Harvard Educational Review.