On CPS closings

The number of school closings trickling out today is unprecedented, but in the prior decade CPS closed a lot of schools. So there’s precedent to bring to bear on what’s to come.

In 2009, the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago looked at the effect of elementary school closings from 2001-2006 on children eight years and older—specifically, on the academic effects. What they found was that things didn’t change much either way. The change that did occur was about what you would expect...