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作者

Stacey Steggert;Anne Galletta

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.42,Issue4,P.595-616

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Shaker Heights High School

摘要

Formulae display:?Mathematical formulae have been encoded as MathML and are displayed in this HTML version using MathJax in order to improve their display. Uncheck the box to turn MathJax off. This feature requires Javascript. Click on a formula to zoom. This article examines the experience of school closure as narrated by youth in survey responses and as evident in school-level characteristics drawn from publicly available data during the 2010–2012 years of district reform in Cleveland, Ohio. Among ninth-grade students reporting closure of their K–8 schools, closed-ended survey data suggest nearly half of the students reporting ease in transitioning schools following school closure. Open-ended data offer a more nuanced story, with some students narrating loss of relationships, sense of uprooting, and emotional upset and others describing a fresh start, new friends, and discovery of self in the transition. Survey data also indicate regularity of changing schools and transportation challenges. A study of publicly available data, comparing student characteristics at the school level between receiving and non-receiving schools, indicates that schools that received students following closures were less likely to graduate students on time and were more likely to discipline students. Receiving schools were more likely to serve students who were identified as having cognitive, learning, and emotional disabilities. Though survey data portray both struggle and resilience, the study of student characteristics in schools receiving students displaced by closure suggests considerable strain on receiving schools, revealing conditions exacerbated in school closure for students of color, poor students, and students with disabilities. Introduction As a student, I changed schools a whole lot. It affected a lot of areas in my life that I feel like I cannot get back. My academics suffered, my social relationships suffered, and my overall sense of belonging as far of the school. I feel like for some students, school closure and just changing schools a lot has made them dropout and it’s contributed to the dropout rate. And for me, I feel like this made me more resilient and a little more aware of the things that could happen and not become so affected by it, but nonetheless some students are not as resilient and it makes the numbers go down. (Galletta et al., 2014) The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequityAll authorsStacey Steggert & Anne Gallettahttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1474080Published online:14 June 2018 Figure 1. Percentage of survey responses on number of schools attended from kindergarten through eighth grade. Display full size Figure 1. Percentage of survey responses on number of schools attended from kindergarten through eighth grade. Four years after graduating from her high school, Jayme Thomas spoke before a group of teachers, district officials, parents, students, and administrators about her experience of school closure. Having changed schools frequently, her high school was the first school in which she had remained enrolled for more than one year. At graduation, Jayme was awarded an academic scholarship. She had hoped to return to her high school as a volunteer, where she might coach students in track, the sport in which she competed. Following the graduation of her senior class, her high school was officially closed. Like Jayme’s story, the narrative of school closure within the press for school accountability is complex, reflecting some degree of resilience and estrangement. In the intertwining of uprooting and insight in Jayme’s statement, there is an acknowledgment of students not completing high school. The backdrop of frequently changing schools and its consequences in terms of things a student “cannot get back” suggest a deep familiarity with the conditions of economic stress and uncertainty shaping the experience of students in comprehensive high schools in poor and working-class neighborhoods of color in Cleveland, Ohio. The purpose of this article is to examine the experience of school closure as narrated by youth in survey responses and as evident in publicly available data on student characteristics at the school level during the 2010–2012 years of district reform in Cleveland, Ohio. The study places the survey data, grounded in students’ representations of their lived experiences, in conversation with 2 years of data reported by the school district to the state Department of Education that compares student characteristics in buildings receiving students displaced by school closure with those not receiving these students. The research intends to capture through mixed methods students’ experiences of the early path of the Cleveland district’s trajectory toward a portfolio system of school choice. It situates the experience of school closure within a broader context of state and federal academic performance accountability, state-level legislative support for charter school growth and private school vouchers, significant momentum in philanthropic funding for school choice and school closure, excessive high-stakes testing as early as kindergarten, rigid and punitive discipline policies, and teacher evaluation heavily weighted by student test scores. When used as a means of enforcing accountability measures, school closure is a policy of consequence: perform well or be shut down. Our intent is also to examine the consequences of school closure as an improvement strategy and to call into question educational policy that operates within a vacuum as it fails to locate where responsibility rests for outcomes that prompt closure of underperforming schools. The study frames accountability as decontextualized from the relational and material conditions students encounter as evident in the study data. Research context In the 2009–2010 school year, district reform efforts were underway to address a large budget deficit, decreased enrollment, and depressed achievement for schools serving some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland. The district announced its plan for transformation in January of 2010. Between June of 2010 and 2011, 23 schools were closed, 2 of which were high schools. Nearly all of the schools were located on the district’s predominantly African American and high-poverty east side. A portion of the district’s funding gap was addressed partially through backing of local foundations, contingent upon the board of education’s approval of school accountability through this plan for district transformation. Additional financial support occurred through Ohio’s receipt of Race to the Top funds, a federal competitive grant program, and the School Improvement Grant, available through Title I funding. These funding sources included an emphasis on “turning around” schools, relying on school closure as one form of “intervention.” In June 2012, the state legislature approved and the governor signed into law House Bill 525, furthering reform efforts through what is referred to as the Cleveland Plan. Promoting public–private collaboration and reducing the threat of state intervention, the Cleveland Plan included access on the part of high-performing charter schools to local school levy funds, a first in the state and a significant break in the structure of local taxation for public schooling. The legislation supported Cleveland’s use of a portfolio system of choice, removing barriers to cross-city school enrollment as well as including charter schools in the listing of school options available to Cleveland students. Generally, school closure is used within the portfolio system when schools do not meet accountability requirements for academic performance (Bulkley, 2010). A district’s use of school closure in this policy arrangement is viewed as a consequence for low test scores and as evidence of quality control. Among the Cleveland Plan’s four goals was the goal to “grow the number of high-performing district and charter schools in Cleveland and close and replace failing schools” (Mayor of the City of Cleveland, Frank G. Jackson, 2012, p. 6). Theoretical framework Critical theory shapes our interpretation in our study of individual experience in relation to structural conditions (Carspecken & Apple, 1992; Weis & Fine, 2012). Critical race theory provides an analytical die, offering illumination and contrast to make visible considerations of race and class (Ladson-Billings & Donnor, 2005; Solórzano & Yosso, 2000). Our goal is to understand “how specific contextual elements operate on actors to produce outcomes” (Weis & Fine, 2012, p. 177). Our analytic efforts are dialogic in exploring survey participants’ experiences in relation to structural, historical, and relational dimensions (Carspecken & Apple, 1992). In this way, the experience of school closure narrated in the survey data is in conversation with the publicly available data on student characteristics in schools that received students displaced by school closure. Using qualitative and quantitative data, we work to construct an understanding of school closure not currently addressed in the literature, which is largely focused on the impact of school closure on academic outcomes. Notions of accountability have altered in the context of corporate education reform (Au & Ferrare, 2015; Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Lipman, 2004). As noted by critical policy studies scholar Pauline Lipman (2004), accountability “reframed education as performance on achievement tests, undermining broader and more liberatory puposes” (pp. 45–47). Lipman employs Foucault’s (1977/1995) notion of discipline as “surveillance,” where securing social control through “the observation of the many by the few” occurs in state monitoring of performance on tests (see also Vinson & Ross, 2000, para. 8). “Spectacle”—that is, the achievement of social control through “observation of the few by the many” (Lipman, 2004, p. 46)—takes place through published accounts of test scores. Lipman (2004) writes, “This is not a policy that promotes engaged public attention to the inequity in the system; nor is it a policy that encourages collective examination of the problems in the schools” (p. 46). Moreover, Au and Ferrare (2015) argue that there has been a diffusion of accountability as school districts distribute responsibility for public education across a network of private organizations. As these organizations assume greater responsibility for education, the public’s access to and ownership of financial and organizational information and resources diminishes. With increased deregulation on schools supported by private actors and increased control and surveillance on traditional public schools serving the poor, the disabled, and students of color, we see the racialized restructuring of gains and losses as evident in the shifting functions of accountability. In our consideration of the press for accountability, we note that the ability and willingness for listening and understanding the extent of dispossession of assets in public education are significantly reduced. This is particularly true for those operating within private interests who benefit and accumulate wealth and power in marketing schools and the businesses that support them. To examine the experience of school closure, it is necessary to contextualize this policy and its relationship to notions of accountability. As noted by critical educational theorist Michael Apple (2014), “Neoliberalism does not enter into an unoccupied space. It has to engage with these preexisting identities in complex ways” (p. 920). Our theoretical frame includes consideration of Apple’s notion of a space occupied by histories and identities, alliances and conflict. We juxtapose this complexity with the uncontested nature of the logic and structure of accountability school reform and look for small fissures of questioning and critique in the durability of the press for accountability. Like Braun, Ball, Maguire, and Hoskins (2011), we see policy as a process, best studied contextually. Braun et al. (2011) offer four contextual dimensions: (a) situated contexts: the local context and history; (b) professional contexts: teacher commitments, values, and experiences; (c) material contexts: staffing, budget, buildings, technology, and infrastructure; and (d) external contexts: degree of local authority support, student test performance requirements, policy mandates. Our analysis brings situated contexts and external contexts together to examine the experience of school closure. We foreground in our study and in the following review of the literature the context and processes related to school closure that students, their families, and their educators experience, attending to human relations within the physical space of the closing and receiving schools. Literature review In this section, we examine the literature on school closure as it relates to social and spatial contexts first and then follow with attention to the literature on academic achievement, typically the primary focus of school closure studies. This deliberate organization of the literature is intended to underscore the breadth of the educational experience and to acknowledge the complexity of school closure. Our literature review suggests four summative points: (a) the significance of physical and relational space in school closure; (b) tenuous claims of district improvement; (c) a considerable lack of certainty concerning what constitutes a “higher-performing” receiving school; and (d) the racialization of school closure within the federal and state press for accountability. School closure impact on relationship within schools as meaningful spatial contexts In a contextualized study of school closure, attention is given to the lived experience of students, families, and educators situated within communities long impacted by patterns of racial and economic isolation. Two key interrelated areas of focus within these studies include research on relationships within schools slated for closure and the school facility as a space in which those relationships become meaningful. Students’ response to school closure Deeds and Pattillo (2015) studied the relational impact of the closure of an elementary school in Newark, New Jersey. The authors noted that the students, like their families and teachers, did not share the same interpretation of school “failure” as that of district administrators, creating a sense of illegitimacy in the students’ views of the district’s school closure decisions. The authors reported that nearly all the student participants conveyed feelings of loss, confusion, uncertainty, and in some cases anger. According to Kirshner, Gaertner, and Pozzoboni (2010), high school students narrated relational impact following school closure in a southwestern U.S. state. Kirshner et al. (2010) reveal an unmooring of meaningful social connections for displaced students. Students also reported being viewed as “bad, stupid, or useless” (Kirshner et al., 2010, p. 420) and carrying the stigma of their closed school. This sense of exclusion is evident in the writing of Melissa Kissoon (2012) in her narration as “trespasser” in her New York City high school. Serving low-income students of color, her school was in the process of being phased out while four new schools were established in the school building. Kissoon (2012) detailed the circuitous routes she and her classmates were required to take to get from one class to another in a school “that was no longer ours” (p. 147). From a study of their own experience, youth in Cleveland critiqued the policy of school closure as a form of eviction from a relationally meaningful public space (Ayala & Galletta, 2012; McCollum, 2016). Four key concerns emerged from this study: securing transportation to the school to which students had been assigned, succeeding academically after the announcement of school closure and through the process of transition in the school of transfer, establishing oneself relationally with students and educators in the receiving school, and processing the experience of school closure at individual and community levels in contrast to the official district discourse. Splicing images from their school experiences, from local history, and from state and local policy, the study findings were conveyed artistically, capturing the students’ sense of ejection from a place of belonging in the film Lives in Transition: Eviction Notice (jones & Schilling, 2011). Experiences of displacement may diminish students’ willingness to engage in the receiving schools to which they are transferred. McMahon, Parnes, Keys, and Viola (2008) found a strong relationship between feelings of school belonging and student outcomes in their study of academic and psychological outcomes for African American students with disabilities in Chicago who had been transferred to new schools following school closure. Alternatively, students may strategically employ an instrumental approach, shutting down the possibility of relationships and focusing only on graduation, as in the following student response: “I don’t have feelings for this school because I only came here to be able to graduate” (Kirshner et al., 2010, p. 421). There is evidence in the literature of the role of teacher support in the receiving school as instrumental in buffering the impact of school closure (de la Torre & Gwynne, 2009; Kirshner et al., 2010). At the high school level, some students narrate resilience in their transition from the closed school to the receiving school. Kirshner et al. (2010) noted how a narrative of adjustment and “persistence in the face of adversity” (p. 421) reflects a strategy employed by some students to ensure their survival and success. These authors found evidence in some interview and survey data of displaced students narrating the care of an adult in the receiving school. At the elementary school level, de la Torre and Gwynne (2009) indicated that, one year after Chicago school closings, differences in the level of teacher support were critical in explaining the variation in achievement among displaced students. The authors found evidence of higher learning gains in schools in which students reported high levels of positive interaction between students and teachers. A serious investment of resources, particularly teacher attention to the needs of displaced students, has the potential to positively impact academic achievement and buffer school displacement. Displacement of teachers Lipman and Person, in collaboration with Chicago’s Kenwood–Oakland Community Organization (2007), reported demoralization among Chicago educators due to elementary school closings and further threat of closings. The authors also noted that receiving schools in Chicago lacked the resources necessary to address the new demands placed upon them with the arrival of students displaced by school closure. Deeds and Pattillo (2015) underscored elementary schoolteachers’ narratives of experiencing disrespect in the school closure process. Teachers noted the severing of informal mentoring ties between teachers and students as well as collegial networks within the building. These networks, not taken into account in the assigned label of a “failed” school, often facilitated problem solving among adults in the building to address students’ learning needs, social and emotional struggles, and family crises. Aggarwal, Mayorga, and Nevel (2012) documented the experience among high school teachers of destabilization, loss of resources to support student learning, and deterioration in working conditions within schools designated to close after a 4-year phase-out period. As a result, students’ needs for social support during the period of transition may be compromised by the need of adults themselves to adjust to a new set of conditions (Aggarwal et al., 2012). Brummet’s (2014) study of school closing effects on displaced students and students in receiving schools in Michigan noted the unique conditions of school closures that displace teachers as well as students, contributing to the ways in which school closure is “context dependent” (p. 111). School closure and the ecology of family life Deeds and Pattillo (2015) underscored the priorities that families of students displaced by school closure expressed concerning locating a new school for their children: stability, familiarity, and safety. In their 2009 Chicago study of 44 school closings between 2001 and 2006, de la Torre and Gwynne reported that 94% of families of displaced students opted to send their children to schools near their homes, often choosing a school designated by the district as low-performing. In a later study of the 2013 closure of 47 Chicago schools, de la Torre, Gordon, Moore, and Cowhy (2015) examined the critical phase between the announcement of school closure and the transfer of students to receiving schools. The district established specific policy mechanisms for increasing the likelihood that children displaced by school closure would enroll in higher-performing schools. De la Torre et al. (2015) studied the facilitating factors and constraints that families encountered in their efforts to enroll their children in higher-rated schools. Similar to Deeds and Pattillo (2015), the safety ratings of a school and its proximity to the home neighborhood were of great importance to families. In addition to safety and transportation to and from the school, sustained relationships with teachers and support personnel were noted, particularly for students with disabilities, often overriding their concern about necessary supports and services. Impact of school closure on district improvement is tenuous Research before 2015 in several regions of the country—the Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southwest—found little evidence of improved test scores among the majority of students who experience school closure in specific urban school districts (de la Torre & Gwynne, 2009; Engberg, Gill, Zamarro, & Zimmer, 2012; Kirshner et al., 2010). Nearly all students experienced depressed scores the year of the announcement. Though a small percentage of students did show evidence of improved test scores, many more returned to their expected level of performance. De la Torre and Gwynne (2009), Engberg et al. (2012), and Brummet (2014) reported no persistent harm to achievement of displaced students. Though there is evidence of gains for those moving from low-performing to high-performing schools, many fewer students enrolled in or had access to higher performing schools. Alternatively, more recent research by Carlson and Lavertu (2015) examined achievement following school closure in 120 district schools in Ohio’s eight urban districts and 78 charter schools in or near urban districts. The study calculates the change in achievement before closure through the third year after closure for displaced students and compared this to students’ change in achievement during the same period of time among similar students not displaced by school closure. The authors reported that 60% of the district school students and 72% of charter school students displaced by school closure were enrolled in a receiving school with a higher average reading achievement than their closed school. Among all students in the study, there was evidence of growth in achievement, as was the case for students who were enrolled in higher performing schools following school closure. However, the authors did not provide results for the 40% of district (and 38% of charter) students who did not enroll in higher performing district schools (Kirshner & Gaertner, 2015). Like Brummet (2014), Carlson and Lavertu (2015) showed a decrease in achievement for the receiving schools. Kemple (2015a) studied New York City schools between 2002 and 2008 that were closed through a phase-out process. This process involves no new enrollment of ninth-grade students and the graduating out of remaining cohorts year by year. Kemple (2015a) found that high school students who remained in phase-out schools performed at higher rates and had improved attendance compared to students in these same schools before the closure decision. Kemple (2015a) cautioned that these gains were similar to those of comparable schools in the study that were also low-performing but not phase-out schools. At the same time, there was an increase in mobility of 10 percentage points in the phase-out schools, and Kemple (2015a) highlighted the substantially lower outcomes for students who transferred out of the phase-out school, suggesting that “students were better off if they did not transfer out of a high school that was being phased out” (p. 38). Most recently, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes examined the impact of school closure on the academic progress of closure students (Han et al., 2017). Using data from 2006 through 2013, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes studied 1,522 low-performing schools that were closed in 26 states, which included 1,204 traditional public schools and 318 charters. Among their findings, Han et al. (2017) noted that school closures were most common in urban districts. The authors also found that decisions to close schools “were tilted towards” schools with higher percentages of students in poverty and Black and Latino students, raising concerns about inequity within the decision-making processes related to school closure. Han et al. (2017) note that a higher percentage of students transferred from schools in the year before closure than the percentage that remained in the school. Similar to Kemple’s (2015) findings, Han et al. (2017) report that those transferring out one year before closure had lower academic performance than those who remained in the school during its final year. Finally, as evident in earlier studies, the common trend was for students displaced by school closure to enroll in schools that were no better performing than the closed school. Here, we see a common trend across the closure studies from De la Torre and Gwynne (2009) concerning the lack of availability of higher-performing schools. Han et al. (2017) argue that the benefits of school closure have been “systematically constrained” (p. 5). “Higher-performing” is a murky concept There is considerable lack of certainty in the reviewed studies concerning what constitutes a “higher performing” receiving school. De la Torre et al. (2015) reported variation among receiving schools in Chicago’s “welcoming school” policy according to the level the schools demonstrated in performance policy points (an index of performance levels on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests [ISAT], performance trends on the ISAT, student academic growth on the ISAT, and attendance). Though 93% of displaced students attended schools with higher performance policy points than their closed schools, slightly less than half of the designated welcoming schools were at the same level of rating category. The authors noted, “Only about one-third of displaced students attended schools with at least 20 performance points higher than the closed school” (de la Torre et al., 2015, p. 18). Similarly, the Ohio study reported that though receiving schools were higher performing at a level of statistical significance, the schools “were also very low achieving—1.21 and 0.77 standard deviations lower than the statewide average for district and charter schools, respectively” (Carlson & Lavertu, 2015, p. 14). In the case of both de La Torre et al. (2015) and Carlson and Lavertu (2015), the notion of higher performing was in direct relation to the performance of the closed school, which was itself considerably low. In this manner, school closure involves equity claims not premised on assurances of access to high-performing schools. In the recent New York City study, Kemple (2015b) noted that though a 56% graduation rate within 4 years in the postclosure cohort is evidence of improved performance in the landscape of reform in New York City, he concedes that this performance is still dissatisfying (Kemple, 2015b, p. 10). Although he indicated that less than a third of New York City students are currently enrolled in what Balfanz and Letgers (2004) refer to as “dropout factories,” the 56% graduation rate appears to fall into the category of schools that Balfanz and Letgers (2014) see as “high schools in which graduation is likely not the norm” (p. 3). The racialization of school closure within the federal and state press for accountability Schools identified for closure frequently serve large numbers of students from high-poverty neighborhoods and students with disabilities. In the Ohio study by Carlson and Lavertu (2015), 73% of the displaced students were Black, 92% were economically disadvantaged, and 19% were students with disabilities. The average student in the closed school sample performed at approximately the 20th percentile on statewide reading and math tests. Brummet (2014) and Engberg et al. (2012) report that students displaced by school closure were more likely to be African American and receive free or reduced-price lunch. Brummet (2014) reported that the students are more likely to be performing 0.4–0.5 standard deviations worse than the state average but also a little over 0.1 standard deviations worse than students in their district, and Engberg et al. (2012) report that displaced students are much less likely to be gifted. Student characteristics in New York City for youth experiencing school closure as reported by the Urban Youth Collaborative (2011) reveal disproportionality of representation of students who were eligible for free lunch, were English language learners, and whose academic performance was below grade level. The school closures reported by the Urban Youth Collaborative (2011) occurred largely in neighborhoods serving Black and Latino/a students. De la Torre et al. (2015) most fully address context in their description of students impacted by school closure as more likely than those not impacted to share the following characteristics: receive free or reduced-price lunch, receive special education services, be overage for their grade, experience a change in residences in the year before the school closure, reside in neighborhoods with crime rates nearly double that of the average crime rate in neighborhoods for Chicago Public Schools students, and reside in neighborhoods where the male adult unemployment was higher than in neighborhoods of students not affected by school closure. In summary, this contextualization of school closure, employed as a strategy for district improvement, complicates untroubled assertions of access and choice following school closure. As noted by former high school student Melissa Kissoon (2012), school closure or school replacement rendered students, families, and former educators as trespassers in the facilities to which they once had legitimate access. Close-and-replace policies and co-location of schools within the same space place community members in conflict over access to contested reconfiguration of neighborhood school buildings (Pappas, 2012). At the same time, school closure has been argued as a source of justice, a way to facilitate equity through shuttering schools that underperform and/or are underenrolled. However, as indicated in this literature review, the research suggests a failure to achieve procedural dimensions of social justice for key stakeholders as well as tenuous distributive justice claims concerning academic performance as an outcome of substance. Methodology The research design is a mixed method study involving qualitative and quantitative methods, with approval from our university Institutional Review Board. The quantitative analysis is described below, followed by a description of the survey method and analysis. Methods of study for comparing educational outcomes and building-level characteristics between receiving and non-receiving buildings The study employed a comparison of student characteristics at the school level between high schools receiving and not receiving students displaced from school closure in years 1 and 2 following the first wave of closure in 2010. Though the closures affected all schools in the district, they most directly influenced the conditions in the receiving schools to which the displaced students were sent. Building-level data were appropriate at this stage because students’ outcomes are tied together at the building level. Students whose home buildings received displaced students experienced the effects of school closure as well, albeit in different ways than students who were moved to receiving buildings. The study used publicly available data from Ohio’s Department of Education website through its interactive Local Report Card website (iLRC). These are the same data that the 2001 and 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act requires districts report, and they are used to drive educational policy decisions. We employed a logistic regression model in order to examine patterns in students’ academic characteristics for the 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 school years using the following seven metrics: graduation rate, disability status (further divided into three categories: specific learning disability, cognitive disability, and emotional disturbance), identification as gifted, homeless status, and disciplinary action. The model is given by the equation P Y =   1 1 + e − ( b 0 + b 1 G R A D + b 2 S L D + b 3 E D + b 4 C D +   b 5 G I F T E D + b 6 H O M E L E S S + b 7 D I S C I P L I N E     . The sample consisted of 12,155 students across all of the high schools in the district for the 2010–2011 school year, which is the year that the school closures went into effect, and 11,213 students for the 2011–2012 school year, the second year following school closure. Because the data were obtained from the state Department of Education website, student anonymity is preserved. For both school years, all 21 high schools in the district were included in the sample. Though the Ohio Revised Code recognizes 13 disability categories, we elected to include only three specific learning disabilities (SLD), cognitive disability (CD), and emotional disturbance (ED) (Ohio Revised Code, §3301-51-01). We selected these categories in part because the assignment of SLD, ED, and CD disability categories may be symptomatic of bias (O’Connor & Fernandez, 2006), unlike disability categories such as deafness and visual impairment, and as such may reflect a social construction (Reid & Knight, 2006). A disproportionate number of minority students are labeled as SLD, CD, or ED and are consequently assigned to separate, segregated school settings (Artiles, 2011; O’Connor & Fernandez, 2006; Skiba et al., 2006). The medical model on which special education is predicated incorrectly locates disability within a person, rather than characterizing certain disability categories as artifacts of a larger social construct, while simultaneously ignoring the influence of underlying variables such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender. Because we were interested in what Artiles (2011) refers to as the “doublebind,” students marginalized by intersecting socially constructed labels associated with race and disability, we focused on SLD, ED, and CD among the 13 disability categories. In the study, we hypothesized that buildings that were designated as receiving schools would house students who experienced disproportionately negative academic outcomes, drawing on the research literature. The selection of design and evaluation of the adequacy of the sample size was guided by the discussion outlined in Peng, Lee, and Ingersoll (2002) and Field (2009). The model describing each school year included the dichotomous building-level variables on-time graduation (GRAD), which took a value of 1 if a student failed to graduate on time; specific learning disability (SLD), emotional disturbance (ED), cognitive disability (CD), gifted (GIFTED), and homeless status (HOMELESS), all of which took a value of 1 if a student was not identified; and disciplinary action (DISCIPLINE), which took a value of 1 if a student was not subject to disciplinary action. Disciplinary actions include all suspensions and expulsions. Each school year was examined independently to allow for comparison between schools that received displaced students and those that did not. The full model was able to classify 73% of cases correctly for the 2010–2011 school year and 69.3% of cases correctly for the 2011–2012 school year, which is an improvement over the null model for both academic years. Publicly available data obtained from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) should be interpreted with caution. The ODE indicates only the number of students within each of the predictor categories. The number of students who fall into multiple categories is not reported, nor does the ODE identify characteristics of individual students. This need for caution is outweighed by the value of using a publicly available data set. An enterprising citizen-scientist could replicate our study or extend our methods to examine effectiveness of school closure as a turnaround strategy in other districts. Survey methods The survey was administered using Survey Monkey in the fall of 2012 in seven Cleveland high schools, and the analysis took place in the spring of 2013. The survey results include responses from 258 participants, which represents 6.73% of all of the ninth-grade students. The analysis revealed that the sample size was adequate to obtain statistical power at the recommended 0.80 level (Cohen, 1988). Of the 258 respondents, 110 (42.64%) were male and 148 (57.36%) were female. The demographics of survey respondents were as follows: 2.01% American Indian or Alaskan Native; 1.20% Asian; 68.86% Black/African American; 11.65% Latino/Hispanic; 8.43% multiracial; and 12.85% White/European American. These demographics reflect those of the district in general. 1 However, because all high schools in the district were not represented in the survey, limitations exist as it relates to our interpretation of the data. The participating schools consisted of four comprehensive high schools as well as three small, theme-based district schools established in 2010 as part of the district’s Transformation Plan. Of the seven high schools, three were receiving schools for students displaced in the 2010 closures. Twenty-five students, representing the seven schools, were members of a participatory action research collective, along with Anne, university faculty and students, a retired teacher and active community member, and educators. The 25 youth recruited ninth grade students to participate in the survey and subsequently reported back the results. Survey questions addressed the following categories of students’ experiences in education: frequency in changing schools, experience with school closure, transportation to and from school, relationships with other students and with teachers, classroom instruction, and youth voice. Analysis of the survey data occurred initially during a 2-day research session in January 2013, followed by sessions held monthly that spring through June 2013. During those sessions, the youth researchers, university students and faculty, educators, and a community member examined closed-ended survey results. For the purpose of this study, we only include data from six questions, four closed-ended and two open-ended, directly connected to school closure or related themes. These questions are available in Appendix A. For the open-ended question on school closure impact, the qualitative data were analyzed in two iterations along with an external audit. They were first analyzed by the participatory action research collective membership, producing several broad analytical categories. In the second iteration, Anne specified dimensions within these broad categories to provide greater detail and nuance and used NVivo to organize the data thematically. An external auditor with no direct involvement with the project and trained in qualitative research conducted a review of the coding inventory and re-analyzed the open-ended closure impact data. We employed a test of interrater reliability using NVivo qualitative research coding software, comparing Anne’s and the external auditor’s analyses. The kappa coefficients ranged from 0.52 to 0.89, with four of the six analytical themes meeting the 0.70 acceptable cutoff for intercoder reliability (Hays & Singh, 2012). These results are outlined in Table 1. Findings Findings from the mixed method study include results from an analysis of state data on student characteristics and data from a student survey. These are detailed in separate sections below. Findings from study comparing educational outcomes and school-level characteristics between receiving and non-receiving buildings Findings from the logistic regression analysis compared the odds that students attending schools receiving students displaced by school closure would display certain academic characteristics when compared with students attending non-receiving schools. Homeless status was not a significant predictor for either school year. Schools that received students who were displaced by school closures were 2.9 times less likely to serve students identified as gifted during the 2010–2011 school year (p < .001) and 18.4 times less likely to serve students identified as gifted during the 2011–2012 school year (p < .001). In terms of disability status, receiving schools were more likely to serve students identified as eligible for special education services than students attending a non-receiving building with some exceptions. More specifically, during the 2011–2012 school year, schools that received students as a result of closures were 2.19 times more likely serve students who were identified as having a specific learning disability (p < .001) and 2.9 times more likely to service students who were identified as having an emotional disturbance (p < .001). Schools that received students as a result of closures were 2.2 times more likely to serve students who were identified as having a cognitive disability during the 2010–2011 school year (p < .001) and 5.4 times more likely to serve students who were identified as having a cognitive disability during the 2011–2012 school year (p < .001). The exceptions to this generalization were that emotional disturbance was not a significant variable during the 2010–2011 school year and that during the 2010–2011 school year, schools that received students as a result of closures were only 0.57 times as likely to serve students who were identified as having a specific learning disability (p < .001). These results are reported in Tables 2 and 3.The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequityAll authorsStacey Steggert & Anne Gallettahttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1474080Published online:14 June 2018 Table 1. Kappa coefficients for inter-coder reliability on school closure impact question. CSVDisplay Table The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequityAll authorsStacey Steggert & Anne Gallettahttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1474080Published online:14 June 2018 Table 2. Logistic regression analysis of students’ academic characteristics for the 2010–2011 school year. CSVDisplay Table The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequityAll authorsStacey Steggert & Anne Gallettahttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1474080Published online:14 June 2018 Table 3. Logistic regression analysis of students’ academic characteristics for the 2011–2012 school year. CSVDisplay Table Academic vulnerability For both school years, the odds of on-time graduation were negatively related to attendance at a receiving school. Schools that received students displaced by closure were 5.26 times more likely to fail to graduate students on time in the 2010–2011 school year (p < .001) and 3.84 times more likely to fail to graduate students on time at the end of the 2011–2012 school year (p < .001). As noted above, receiving schools were more likely to serve students who were identified as eligible for special education services than non-receiving schools and less likely to serve students who were identified as gifted. These data suggest that the high schools receiving students displaced by school closures in 2010 and 2011 in Cleveland were serving a high concentration of students who were academically vulnerable. Greater likelihood of disciplinary action The logistic regression analysis revealed that receiving schools were 9.52 times more likely to suspend or expel students during the 2010–2011 school year (p < .001) and 2.59 times more likely to suspend or expel students during the 2011–2012 school year (p < .001) in comparison to schools that did not receive students displaced by closure. Receiving schools also saw an increase in attention to safety and security; heightened surveillance may have led to an increase in reporting of disciplinary events. A greater concentration of disciplinary events suggests that students in receiving schools were more likely to experience some form of interruption in their academic experience due to disciplinary action. It reveals the degree to which the context in the receiving schools included policies of zero tolerance and frequent interaction with security guards and/or police. Survey findings Data from the fall 2012 survey of ninth-grade students are discussed below. These themes are drawn from survey respondents’ data from six questions, four of which were closed-ended questions on transportation to school, frequency of changing schools, transitional experience into new school, and two were open-ended questions, with one on students’ experience of the impact of school closure and the other on the experience of getting to and from school. The questions are provided in Appendix A. Transition and impact experience following school closure In the survey of ninth-grade students in seven district schools, students were asked, “If you attended a school that was closed, how was your experience transitioning to a new school?” Among those who indicated that they attended a school that had closed, 11% reported that the transition was “very hard,” 32% said it was “hard,” 49% said it was “easy,” and 9% reported that it was “very easy.” An open-ended question followed, asking the following: “If you attended a school that closed, how did it impact your life?” Among the responses, 28% narrated loss and struggle, 16% of survey respondents indicated that their experience of school closure did not impact their life, and 13.6% responded that it was a new opportunity. 2 All thematic categories are provided in Table 4. Both the closed-ended and open-ended question, the former on the transitional experience associated with school closure and the latter on impact, suggest a narrative of resilience and opportunity as well as stories of hardship and loss. These complex dimensions of the school closure experience are detailed in the thematic clusters discussed below.The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequityAll authorsStacey Steggert & Anne Gallettahttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1474080Published online:14 June 2018 Table 4. Thematic categories for open-ended responses on impact of school closure. CSVDisplay Table Constraints: Loss and struggle Among the ninth-grade students who indicated that their K–8 school had closed, 28% noted an experience of constraints, struggle, and loss. These included responses associating school closure with an uprooting of self or family, such as a neighborhood move, missing one’s school, losing “a part of oneself,” and losing memories due to the uprooting from physical space, as in “knowing that it’s not there anymore is like all my memories from when I was a kid [are] gone.” Also noted in some of these responses was a disruption of routines associated with school, having to move neighborhoods, or requiring new ways of getting to the school. Another dimension under constraints was loss of relationships, reflecting a severing of connections with friends and/or teachers. Narratives underscored that school closure was hard “because everyone I knew was getting split up into different schools and I had to say bye to some of my friends.” Also noted were losing ties with teachers “that I cared about.” The largest dimension in this category of constraint involved emotional upset, with key emotions associated with the impact of school closure being sadness, confusion, and anger. A response that fits each dimension under the thematic category of constraint is the following: All my friends were gone[.] I was expecting to graduate from my school. It also hurt me when I went to another school because we were all packed in the classroom. It was very hard to learn something because there were people from different gangs that often fought. My eighth grade year was terrible[;] I was packed in the class with at least 40 other kids. There was not enough books to go around people [and] were stealing books out of lockers. It was not easy switching schools. New opportunities: Offering a chance to meet new friends, discover something new about oneself, and experience a positive change Alternatively, 13.6% of the ninth-grade students indicated that school closure resulted in an opportunity of some kind. For example, some students reported the opportunity to make new friends, as in, “It helped me associate more and also I had got a chance to meet other students.” Also noted was the chance to start new and learn more things about one’s capabilities, noted in the following: “It change[d] my ways of being a better person and a new me.” Finally, among these responses was the recognition that there may be new programs in the receiving school. This was evident in a response anticipating school closure as offering access to resources, as in the following: “I think it would be eas[i]er for me to do after school projects such as sports and after school activities.” Initial constraints and then opportunities In a related direction, 4.8% of the survey responses to the open-ended question on impact of school closure noted that there was an initial constraint followed by what appears to be a positive development. These involved statements mostly about losing friends and relationships with teachers and later making friends. Students also noted that they found it hard to get used to a new school “but after a while I starting loving it.” These responses ultimately noted gains, as in the response, “I felt sort of sad that I had to leave all my friends, but it introduced me to new things.” Additionally, 9.6% of the responses noted that some condition reduced, or softened, the impact of school closure, such as enrolling in the receiving school for a short duration or transitioning with one’s cohort of students. Adjustments and adaptation Survey responses also noted some degree of adjustment and adaptation related to the school closure experience, with 7.2% responding in this manner. These responses mostly addressed getting accustomed to a new social and academic landscape. At the same time, unlike the thematic category of initial constraints and then opportunities, these responses did not offer a positive outcome. Instead, they underscored strategies for coping and getting through the experience of being in a new school. These responses held in common the discourse of “had to” or “just have to” as in, “It impact[ed] my life because I had to try to adapt to a new school and had to adapt to new people, new attitude, new teacher, and a new style of teaching.” No impact When asked what impact school closure had on their life, 16% of the respondents reported an absence of impact. Coupled with the data that approximately half of the students reported ease in transitioning schools during the experience of school closure, the “no impact” response may suggest that the school closure experience did not create much hardship. Alternatively, a review of the responses, such as “it really didn’t,” “nothing,” and “it really didn’t impact my life,” may suggest that very little changed for the respondent. In this manner, the response may imply no real change toward increasing access to opportunity in contrast to the discourse of transformation associated with the reform initiative in which school closure is embedded. Considerable student movement from school to school, particularly on the east side of Cleveland Changing schools frequently was evident in the survey data. Among the respondents, all students reported changing schools at some point in their K–8 trajectory, and 35% reported having changed schools five to nine times. Six percent indicated that school changes occurred more than nine times. The movement is substantial, particularly given the K–8 school structure, which would ideally produce continuity across the elementary and middle school grades before reaching high school. Figure 1 provides a summary of the 258 responses across the seven schools, which includes comprehensive high schools on the east and west sides of the district and several smaller, more recently opened theme-based high schools on the east, west, and south areas of the district. Among responses from students attending high schools on the east side, from which nearly all of the 23 schools closed in 2010 and 2011 were located, half reported having attended five or more schools since kindergarten, and 7% reported attending more than nine schools before completing their K–8 schooling. Transportation challenges Upon the opening of the 2012–2013 school year, 3 years after the first wave of school closures, transportation to school remained an issue, as evident in responses to the ninth-grade student survey. Nearly one third of the respondents reported taking the Rapid Transit Authority (RTA), the city’s bus and rail system. Among these students, 63% reported receiving bus tickets directly from their school. The remaining responses indicated that tickets were purchased from the RTA by families or, in some cases, students bought tickets from peers eligible to receive them. Either way, students noted that families incurred the cost. In responses to an open-ended survey question about their experience of transportation to and from school, students expressed concern about the district 3-mile requirement. Some relied on parents for transportation, which they noted was a burden due to work schedules and access to a car. Others reported on the economic hardship of paying for bus tickets, as noted in the following statement: I just want the school to give me bus tickets because I live all the way on east 99th Street in Dickens far from here so I would like the school to give me a bus ticket because paying five dollars every day that [is] 25 dollars a week that [is] not right. A year and a half after the survey was administered, the district changed its transportation policy, increasing access to public transportation for high school students in January 2014. For the 2017–2018 school year, the district policy indicated on its website that students in grades 7–12 who lived one mile or over in distance from their home to their neighborhood school were eligible for an RTA swipe card. Students in kindergarten through sixth grade who lived one mile or more from school were eligible for “some form of transportation service” (Cleveland Metropolitan School District, 2018). These policies are more generous than the state requirements. 3 Discussion The use of survey responses and state data on student characteristics during the 2010–2012 years of district reform in Cleveland, Ohio, offers a contextualization of school closure (Braun et al., 2011), particularly in terms of situated local contexts in relation to policies associated with accountability. Though we focus on one urban district through the study of Cleveland, the literature review suggests similar patterns in many urban districts. In the survey results, school closure is narrated as severing connections within schools, where satisfying and productive relationships were once sustained. It is also associated with an opportunity for a fresh start or a beginning in a new social context. And in one sixth of the responses, it is reported as having no impact on students’ lives. Evident in the data is the everyday experience among students as it relates to changing schools, with 41% of respondents reporting that they attended more than five schools since kindergarten. There is the possibility that for youth from poor and working-class neighborhoods of color, school closure may fold into the regularity of frequently changing schools. In this sense, the experience would be reflective of a rhythm of frequent interruptions in key life events, such as attending school. This may inform the phenomenon of student reporting an ease in transitioning from school closure, with 49% of students reporting the transition following school closure was easy. In a separate study of survey responses from a subset of schools, focusing on the east side schools, 53% reported that the transition was easy (Galletta, in press). Some students made light of the closure experience. We suggest that the routinization of changing schools influences the contradictory narrative of nonchalance and of agitation, more observable in the open-ended data. For example, a respondent noted that the closure resulted in “not that much” impact. However, within this same student’s response there is a tug toward more troubled emotions as the respondent adds “but I was mad [be]cause I really like that school.” The experience of starting fresh in a new school following school closure reveals students’ value for access to new peers from different neighborhoods, new teachers, and possibly additional resources. A student noted that the impact from school closure “helped me associate more and also I had got a chance to meet other students.” The challenge of negotiating a new environment may involve discomfort and require a form of stretching oneself at the same time it offers potential growth and discovery of strengths within, as in the response, “It taught me how to be myself and how smart I was.” This view reflects a realization of a strength that one possesses that is newly discovered and perhaps shaped by the experience of school closure. For some students, school closure may be an opening for social growth and possibly access to resources. The school-level data comparing student characteristics in receiving schools with those of students in non-receiving schools suggest that the press for accountability through school closure failed to offer displaced students more positive and productive learning environments. First, the school-level data indicate that students in receiving schools following school closure were more likely than students in non-receiving schools to experience a disciplinary event. Second, there were academic challenges for students in the receiving schools. The data show a greater likelihood that receiving schools would not graduate students on time. Diversity of student ability was not evident, because there was a decreased likelihood that receiving schools would serve gifted students. Finally, there was also a greater likelihood that receiving schools served students who were identified as having cognitive, learning, and emotional disabilities. Implications Schools that received students displaced by closure were more likely to serve students with multiple axes of disadvantage than schools that were not affected by the district’s use of closure as a school improvement strategy. These conditions produce intersecting structures of inequality and disadvantage through school closure, such as decreased access to free appropriate public education, concentrated poverty, and school settings that are increasingly segregated by race and disability status. Extending Reid and Knight’s (2006) critique of the current educational paradigm as creating structures of disadvantage for students of color, the study findings suggest that the process of closing schools sustains structures of disadvantage. Nationally and locally at the time of the district’s school closures and displacement of students in receiving schools, the use of harsh penalties for noncompliance among students toward school rules flourished as a discipline policy (American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008; Booth et al., 2011; Losen & Martinez, 2013). The heavy presence of police in urban schools deepened the negative impact of zero tolerance policies, as teachers and principals ceded authority to police officers (Nolan, 2011). In the 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 Cleveland school years, school security was tightened to respond to anticipated conflict among students (Ott, 2010). Frequently changing schools for poor and working-class students of color may contribute to estrangement between students and teachers and among students (Toneff-Cotner, 2015). Kirshner et al. (2010) distinguish mobility due to school closure as qualitatively different from other moves that students and their families make, reflecting closure conditions that have “the potential to marginalize students” (p. 423). These findings correspond to the literature on the impact of school closure on students’ experience of schools as meaningful social contexts. For example, youth researchers’ interpretation of school closure was that of a policy imposed on students and their families: a form of removal from a space of belonging (Ayala & Galletta, 2012; jones & Schilling, 2011; jones, Stewart, Ayala, & Galletta, 2015; Kirshner et al., 2010; Shiller, 2018). Critique of school closure offers insight and contextualization of the press for accountability as not only potentially exacerbating school transience but also rupturing the social contract between young people and public institutions regarding what constitutes public space and accountability to communities. Toneff-Cotner (2015) documents disruption and student anger over the closure of a Toledo, Ohio, high school in the 1990s, with relational and civic consequences evident into adulthood. This rupture is evident in the theme of eviction conveyed in poetry written by a former Cleveland student Eddy Ashford, who integrated spoken-word images of a community excluded from the district’s decision-making process and a policy that exacerbated already existing struggles among families. Captured in the film Lives in Transition: Eviction Notice (jones & Schilling, 2011), Eddy speaks of removal “from our home school, even though the bills have been paid.” These words speak to the broader sociopolitical context of disinvestment (Fine & Ruglis, 2009) and removal of what is seen as systemic “blight” within the press for accountability, evident in a discourse that promises something better for all (Fullilove, 2004). The history of urban renewal in Cleveland, like elsewhere, points to the entanglement of privilege and exclusion, products of the impulse for transformation (Galletta, in press). There are related patterns in the city’s school reform initiatives. Eight years following the first wave of school closures, new district schools now draw middle- and working-class families into programs supported by private and nonprofit sectors and many of the charter online and bricks-and-mortar schools become temporary stations as students move between them and academically struggling, underresourced neighborhood schools. The district transformation reflects the removal and disappearance of those students “who are not as resilient”—the very group of students who create a critical awareness for Jayme Thomas “of the things that could happen” as noted in her opening narrative. The political context of the study underscores dimensions of what Lynch, Grummel, and Devine (2012) and others refer to as the new managerialism evident within federal, state, and local educational policy and legislation. In understanding the global reach of this political context, Lynch et al. (2012) write from within higher education in Ireland and note the very gendered processes at work in neoliberalism, involving persons as individual actors and at a distance from family obligations, nurturing practices, and relational ties. These appear to us as masculinized to a toxic degree. Michael Apple (2006) refers to the process of “conservative modernization” (p. 919) that is more than abstract economic theory but reaches into the everyday lives of students, teachers, and administrators. Lynch et al. (2012) analyze dimensions of the new managerialism as reflecting “care-less citizenship.” (p. 177). The authors trace the discourse associated with the moves toward shrinking social welfare and viewing privatization as investment. Alternatively, funding for basic services for the health and well-being of the public in the context of new managerialism is seen a drag on efforts to narrow the scope and responsibility of government. Building from critical bifocality (Weis & Fine, 2012) and dialogic data generation (Carspecken & Apple, 1992), we reframe notions of accountability (Au & Ferrare, 2015; Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Lipman, 2004), noting, along with critical education scholars Madeline Fox and Michelle Fine (2013): Accountability regimes are always instituted from above, with authority to judge, punish and sanction, while responsibility and blame are scattered below. With a downward glare, enacted by “objective experts”, deficits are documented, while the structural origins and embodied scars of dispossession are erased. The regime persists uncontested until someone says—What if neo-liberalism were held accountable? (p. 322) The study findings complicate untroubled assertions of access and choice following school closure (Smarick, 2012). In these assertions, school closure has been argued in the school reform literature as a necessary strategy for district transformation (Mayor of the City of Cleveland, Frank G. Jackson, 2012). This policy was included as a form of corrective action in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Lipman, 2015), as federal legislation shifted the focus of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act from input equity to outcome accountability (Rebell & Wolff, 2008). In contrast, however, research from cities across the United States reveals how school closure has estranged students in the displacement process (Buras, Randels, Salaam, & Students at the Center, 2010; Deeds & Pattillo, 2015; Hernandez & Galletta, 2016; Kirshner et al., 2010) and split communities over access to public school buildings for close-and-replace policies and co-location of schools within the same space (Pappas, 2012). At the national level, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, along with Black Lives Matter and Journey for Justice, announced their call for a moratorium on school closure in the fall of 2016 (Strauss, 2016). In Philadelphia, neighborhood stakeholders shifted the lens of accountability from systemic-level concerns, such as the district’s fiscal troubles and underenrolled schools, to the disproportional impact of the school closures on African American neighborhoods (Good, 2016). Contextualizing the problem of school closure as situated in a history of racial segregation, disinvestment, and the reproduction of structural injustice, neighborhood stakeholders reframed accountability to address these spatialized inequalities, resulting in the cessation of school closures during the subsequent 2 years. In this manner, the fissures of questioning and critique are evident within the durability of the press for accountability. In 2014, a number of cities filed Title VI complaints with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education (Strauss, 2014). A year earlier, on January 29, 2013, over 200 students, parents, and community activists traveled to Washington, DC to testify before the U.S. Department of Education about the negative impact of school closure. On that day, Jayme Thomas and vanessa jones, a visual artist and faculty member at Cleveland State University—both members of the participatory action research collective noted in this study—offered to Congresswoman Marcia Fudge a critical contextualization of the experience of school closure for Cleveland youth. Layering resilience and estrangement, hope and inequity, they surfaced the lived experience of students within the press for accountability. Limitations There are limitations to the interpretation of our data. In terms of the survey data, the selection of high schools to participate was purposeful in its inclusion of schools to the east, west, and south of the district, as well as comprehensive and theme-based schools, and the sample size was adequate to obtain statistical power. However, it fell short of a broader representative sampling and engagement of students across all of the district’s high schools, a key limitation. For the quantitative analysis, the data were obtained from the state Department of Education’s database and therefore did not allow for a direct investigation of the achievement measures of individual students, nor did it allow us to follow cohorts of students from one building to the next. The tradeoff is that, by utilizing a data set that is publicly available, the methods used in this study can be extended to examine the effectiveness of school closure across any other district. The wealth of information that is available to anyone due to mandatory publicization of school report card data could be used to provide complex information to communities about the conditions within our schools. An additional limitation on these data is that the graduation rate has been calculated using the adjusted cohort model, which is based on the formula created by the National Center for Education Statistics. This method of calculating graduation rates has been found to underestimate the number of students with disabilities who graduate outside of the 4-year time frame. However, this speaks more to the politics of measurement and the inadequacies of the formulas that schools are instructed to use when measuring student outcomes than it does to a limitation in the design of this study. Conclusion To examine the press for accountability through school closure, it was necessary to study and draw inferences from the lived experiences of those closest to the experience of school closure. There are elements of hope and opportunity in the survey responses as well as narratives of sadness, anger, and loss. Even within single narratives, there are contradictions and complexity. The regularity of changing schools may have contributed to the perception among nearly half of the survey respondents that they found the transition to a receiving school to be easy. The narratives of transitional ease as well as those of new beginnings and hope for additional resources are deeply complicated by the findings of receiving school conditions. The state data on student characteristics comparing receiving to non-receiving schools indicate that students in receiving schools were less likely to graduate on time and were more likely to experience a disciplinary event. Students in receiving schools were more likely to be identified as having cognitive, learning, and emotional disabilities. Our results suggest that the use of school closure, school replacement, and the frequency of changing schools are increasingly normative for youth of color in poor and working-class communities of color. Within a high-stakes audit culture, local and state authorities continue to penalize underperforming neighborhood schools as disinvestment paves the way for their disappearance. Acknowledgments We acknowledge the members of the Lives in Transition participatory action research collective, which reflects several phases of critical inquiry and action among Cleveland youth and young adults into issues important to their schools and communities. This work would not have been possible without its early conceptualization by Dr. vanessa jones and Dr. Carmine Stewart as well as the many dedicated graduate students and faculty at Cleveland State University who supported each phase of the work. We are also grateful for the theoretical and methodological guidance from the Public Science Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where the roots of this work were established. Appendix A: Survey questions related to school closure 4. Since kindergarten, how many schools have you attended? 1–2 3–4 5–6 7–9 More than 9 7. If you attended a school that was closed, how was your experience transitioning to a new school? Very hard Hard Easy Very easy I did not attend a school that was closed 8. If you attended a school that closed, how did it impact your life? [open-ended question] 9. How do you most often get to school? I ride a high school shuttle bus Drive myself Someone else drives me Bike Walk I ride the RTA bus. Other (please specify) 11. If you take the RTA, how do you pay for your ticket? (Check all that apply) I use my own money. My parents/family give me money. The school provides the ticket. I buy my bus ticket from another student. I do not take the RTA. 13. What other thoughts do you have about your experience getting an RTA ticket or riding the high school shuttle bus? [open-ended question] Table 1. Kappa coefficients for inter-coder reliability on school closure impact question. Thematic category school closure impactKappa coefficientConstraints then opportunities0.5169Adjustments and adaptations0.6242New opportunities0.7143No impact0.7592Conditions reduce impact0.7714Constraints—Loss and struggle0.8919 Table 2. Logistic regression analysis of students’ academic characteristics for the 2010–2011 school year. Predictorβ SE βWald’s χ2 df p eβ Constant−0.2460.2540.9391.3330.782GRAD1.6610.054954.3231<.0015.263SLD0.5480.08937.9681<.0011.730ED−0.1170.1230.9101.3400.889CD−0.7920.10656.2021<.0010.453GIFTED1.0680.099116.0301<.0012.909HOMELESS−0.1140.1390.6771.4110.892DISCIPLINE−2.2500.0651197.1281<.0010.105 Table 3. Logistic regression analysis of students’ academic characteristics for the 2011–2012 school year. Predictorβ SE βWald’s χ2 df p eβ Constant−0.1830.1321.9091.1670.833GRAD1.3450.054625.2631<.0013.840SLD−0.7860.09765.2621<.0010.456ED−1.0780.21624.8171<.0010.340CD−1.6860.23551.5681<.0010.185GIFTED2.9130.200212.4651<.00118.404HOMELESS0.0440.2110.0431.8351.045DISCIPLINE−0.9510.064223.4761<.0010.386 Table 4. Thematic categories for open-ended responses on impact of school closure. Thematic categoriesPercentage of responses coded in this categoryConstraints, struggle, and loss28Reported no impact16Initial constraints followed by opportunities or conditions improved after transition/something buffered transition14.4Opportunities for new friends and positive changes in self and school13.6Adjustments and adaptation7.2Not applicable16.8Not clear4Notes 1. In 2012–2013, district demographics were as follows: 0.2% American Indian/Alaskan Native; 0.9% Asian or Pacific Islander; 66.9% Black, non-Hispanic; 14.4% Hispanic; 2.9% multiracial; 14.7% White, non-Hispanic, with students with disabilities at 23.0%. 2. Responses coded “not applicable” comprised 16.8% of the survey responses and included statements such as, “I did not attend a school that was closed.” Responses coded as not clear comprised 4% of the survey responses and though these indicated impact, it was unclear how to interpret the statements. For example, one response indicated, “It affected my life because all the teachers cared.” Because it was not clear whether the teachers were from the closed school or the receiving school, the response was coded as “not clear.” 3. According to the Department of Transportation in the district, “State minimum requires transportation for only those students in grades K–8 who reside more than 2.0 miles from school. 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Anne Galletta Anne Galletta is Professor at the College of Education and Human Services at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. As a social psychologist, her research interests include the nature of social and structural relations as they relate to equity in education. Dr. Galletta works with educators, youth, and community members in critical inquiry and action on issues affecting neighborhoods and schools. FundingAt Cleveland State University, we have been generously supported by the Center for Educational Technology, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Engaging Diversity Grants of Excellence.