The Impact of NYC Middle School Closures on Student Achievement

With more than 1.1 million students, the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) is the largest public school system in the country. Over the last decade, the NYC DOE has been at the center of one of the country’s most aggressive and controversial school reform plans under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. A central tenet of their reform plan was the opening of new, higher-performing schools, while closing chronically under-performing schools. As a result of this approach, between 2002 and 2013, a total of 164 failing schools were closed, while 656 new schools were opened. This study sought to examine NYC’s policy of school closure in an attempt to understand if closing underperforming public schools is an effective approach to improving student educational outcomes. Specifically, the team investigated educational outcomes of interest for students who were in middle school at the time of their schools’ closures from 2008 to 2012.