Part 1 of 5

School Closures Rarely Help Students. Here's What the Research Shows

Published November 3, 2026

Portland Public Schools is weighing a plan to close up to 14 schools and reshape dozens more. It's a big decision, and big decisions should rest on evidence. So what does the research say happens to students when districts close schools?

The short answer: closures rarely help students academically, they often set them back for a while, and the one situation where they do help doesn't match what PPS is proposing.

The biggest test case: Chicago, 2013

In 2013, Chicago closed about 50 schools in a single wave, the largest round of closures in U.S. history. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research followed the affected students for years.

What they found:

Test scores dropped for students from the closed schools, starting in the year closures were announced.
Students at the "welcoming" schools that absorbed them saw reading scores dip in the first year after the merger, then rebound.
Reading scores generally recovered after about a year.
Displaced students' math scores were still behind a comparison group four years later.

Chicago is the closest real-world example of a district "going big." It did not produce the gains its supporters hoped for.

When closures do help: moving to a much better school

Across multiple cities, researchers keep finding the same pattern. Displaced students tend to gain only when they move to higher-performing schools.

Chicago (earlier closures): Researchers found that only students who landed in substantially higher-performing schools, roughly the district's top quarter, improved. On average, the moves did not significantly change achievement.
Philadelphia: On average, closures had no effect on displaced students' achievement. Students who went to higher-performing schools did gain.
Michigan: Across more than 200 closures, displaced students suffered no lasting harm on average, and students from relatively low-performing schools gained.
A shrinking urban district (widely identified as Pittsburgh): The district deliberately targeted low-performing schools. Even so, displaced students' test scores and attendance fell, though less when they moved to schools with higher value-added. The study found no harm to students at receiving schools.

In other words, the gains in these studies come from leaving a weak school for a strong one.

The cost to receiving schools

Closures don't just affect the students who move. They affect the schools that take them in.

In Philadelphia, students already at receiving schools lost ground in English and math. Both groups did worse as the share of new students in a receiving school rose. Displaced students who traveled farther missed more school and were suspended more often.
In Michigan, students at receiving schools saw modest negative effects.

The pattern matters for scale: the more students a receiving school absorbs, and the farther students travel, the worse things tend to go.

Pace matters too

Research reviewed by the Fordham Institute suggests that phasing a school out gradually is less disruptive than closing it immediately, for both displaced students and receiving schools.

What this means for Portland

Two points stand out.

1. The one mechanism that reliably produces gains is mostly missing. In the research, academic gains come from moving students out of low-performing schools into much stronger ones. PPS's plan is driven by school size, not performance. Academic performance is not among the district's criteria for choosing them. There's little reason to expect academic gains for students who are simply moved from one adequate school to another.

2. Bigger means more disruption, not more benefit. The studies link worse outcomes to receiving schools absorbing larger shares of new students, and to longer commutes. A plan that closes more schools at once, sends more students to each receiving school, and lengthens travel times is moving in the direction the research warns against.

What families should ask

Which receiving schools would take students under each scenario, and how large a share of each school's enrollment would the new students be?
How much longer would affected students' commutes be?
What evidence does the district have that consolidated schools will outperform the ones being closed?
Has the district considered phasing schools out gradually instead of closing them at once, as the research suggests?

None of this means the district's concerns about thinly staffed schools aren't real. It means closures are a costly tool with a weak track record, and the burden of proof should be on the plan.