The Student Shuffle: Organizational Implications of School Closings.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of large-scale school closings in districts throughout the United States. This study uses an organizational perspective to examine whether school closings and the accompanying redistribution of resources (students and programs) has implications for surviving schools in the surrounding school boundary. In doing so, this study examines a potential mechanism through which schools reproduce stratification via their adaptive responses to local school closings. I use schoollevel data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data and School Attendance Boundary Information System to analyze how school closings impact student composition and program distribution in elementary schools during school years 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011. Multilevel analyses demonstrates school closings seem to be associated with increases in minority composition, student-teacher ratios and likelihood that schools have magnet status among schools in the same school boundary across the three school years examined. Trends among low-SES student composition and Title I status were less consistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]