(AP Photos/M. Spencer Green)
On the same morning that President Barack Obama signed the sweeping education reform bill known as the Every Student Succeeds Act into law, a group of progressive and civil rights advocates gathered on Capitol Hill to spotlight what they call an epidemic of school closures that is damaging communities.
For organizers of the school closures event, which included the civil rights group the Advancement Project and the Journey for Justice Alliance, a grassroots group fighting school closures and privatization, the new education law presents both promise and peril. The Every Student Succeeds Act replaces the controversial No Child Left Behind law, first enacted in 2002, and puts states, not the federal government, in charge of holding schools accountable for their performance.
On the one hand, civil rights and public school advocates say, No Child Left Behind exacerbated the school closure problem by promoting test-and-punish accountability policies and fueling charter school growth. On the other hand, the new Every Student Succeeds law requires states to identify and intervene in low-performing schools, which could lead to more closures.
The anti-school closure movement has gained momentum thanks to parents like Anna Jones, a single mother of four children who spoke at Thursday's congressional briefing. Jones participated in a 34-day hunger strike this past fall in Chicago to fight the closure of Dyett High School.
"Being in the hunger strike changed my life forever," Jones told the audience.
"This is not a publicity stunt for me. This is a cry for help."
Organizers of the event handed out literature calling school closures "a racist model that fails to take into account the history of communities of color that have survived years of discrimination, segregation, underfunding, and marginalization-both inside and outside of schools."
Taniasa Brown, the president of the Newark Student Union, recounted how school closures and unequal school funding have hurt parents and students in her community. Under No Child Left Behind, Brown said, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, was able to push through an agenda of expanding charter schools and shutting down low-performing neighborhood schools that he deemed were failing.
"But our schools aren't 'failing'," Brown said. "They've been failed."
That statement is corroborated by recent research from the Education Law Center, a legal advocacy group. Based on research into the fiscal distress of the Newark Public Schools system, the group concluded that Christie's refusal to adequately fund district schools, while allowing rapid charter school growth, has placed tremendous strain on the district's finances. This has led to program and staffing cuts within Newark schools.
Not all experts cast school closures in a uniformly negative light. Some studies have found evidence that school closures may produce some positive outcomes for students. Last month, a New York University study found that school closures in New York City had little impact-positive or negative-on students' academic performance at the time that the schools were shut down. The researchers also found that closures produced "meaningful benefits" for "future students," meaning the students who had been on track to attend those schools before they closed.
But Julian Vasquez Heilig, an education policy researcher, criticized these findings at Thursday's event-saying there were "too many factors considered" to attribute the improved graduation rates to the school closures. Heilig also stressed that only a "minority" of the research literature suggests that school closures might yield positive effects for children.
Several speakers focused on what might be more productive and equitable alternatives to school closures. Education policy researcher Linda Darling-Hammond cited New York City and Oakland as two cities where "successful community schools" were developed within institutions previously deemed "failing." This can be done, she said, if appropriate investments are made.
But keeping schools open costs money. And neither states nor the federal government appear poised to invest more into public education anytime soon. Also on Thursday, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, released a new report that found that most states are spending even less on education than they did before the recession. In 30 states, total state and local funding combined fell between the 2008 and 2014 school years.
Still, the speakers remained united in their support for community schools and for an end to school closures.
Jitu Brown, the national director of Journey for Justice Alliance did not mince words. "School closings are a human rights issue," he said.
