As schools nationwide continue to face declining enrollment, the likelihood of school closures is increasing across communities. A Sept. 25 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute identified almost 500 schools throughout the country that could be potential candidates based on enrollment and achievement factors.
The report, Underachieving and Underenrolled: Chronically Low-Performing Schools in the Post-Pandemic Era, isn’t a “bad schools list,” wrote Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Michael J. Petrilli and Senior Vice President for Research Amber Northern in the report’s forward.
For example, there are schools on the list where students have low test scores but strong year-to-year growth — which is ultimately a good sign. However, schools made the list in part based on how their state designates their Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools, with many relying heavily on proficiency rates rather than year-over-year student-level growth.
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states are required to identify the lowest-performing 5 percent of their Title I schools using a set of state-defined indicators, high schools with graduation rates below 67 percent, and Title I schools with very low-performing demographic subgroups that did not improve after being previously identified for “additional targeted support and improvement.”
To identify schools where enrollment had declined, the report’s author, Sofoklis Goulas, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, looked at enrollment changes between 2019–20 and 2022–23.
Among the key findings:
- One in 12 public schools in the United States — about 5,100 schools — has experienced a substantial enrollment decline of 20 percent or greater between 2019 and 2023.
- Schools identified by their states as chronically low performing were more than twice as likely to experience sizable enrollment declines as other public schools.
- About 500 schools identified by their states as chronically low performing have also experienced a substantial enrollment decline in the wake of the pandemic.
These low-performing schools were more likely to be located in a high-poverty area where students are more often underserved, according to the report. And as resources continue to dwindle with the loss COVID funds, issues may be exasperated.
“As schools contend with declining enrollment — and the imminent expiration of the billions of dollars in pandemic-related emergency funding — they may face increasingly severe budgetary constraints, staffing adjustments, and programmatic shifts, potentially compromising the already variable quality of education provided,” Goulas wrote.
There was a notable increase in the proportion of public schools experiencing significant declines in enrollment following the pandemic. Less than 5 percent of schools experienced enrollment losses exceeding 20 percent between 2016–17 and 2019–20, compared to approximately 8 percent between 2019–20 and 2022–23.
Further, many chronically low-performing schools already grappling with systemic challenges and resource constraints were more than twice as likely to experience enrollment declines exceeding 20 percent. Throughout the country, nearly three quarters of the CSI schools that experienced enrollment declines of more than 20 percent were located in high-poverty neighborhoods.
“Tackling these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that addresses systemic inequities, allocates resources strategically, protects valuable infrastructure, and prioritizes the needs of vulnerable student populations,” Goulas wrote. “However, in some cases, consolidation or closure may be unavoidable.”
