Administrative School Closures Descriptive Report
Number of Schools in the Twin Cities Metro
School Level Imputations
There is missing school level data (i.e. high school, middle school, elementary school) for records before 2000. We imputed pre-2000 school levels based on the level that was assigned most often to that school after 2000. It’s uncommon, but some schools change levels over time. We standardized all school levels to be consistent across time. This may create some inaccuracies in any school level analysis or stratification.
Number of Administrative School Closures and Openings Over Time
Limitations
A school closure was defined as any school that had students for at least one year after 2001 followed by no students in a subsequent year. A school opening is defined as a school that had no students in 2001 but enrolled students before 2022 for at least one year. Some schools reopen after being closed, and only their initial closure is reflected in this analysis. The definition of closures used for this analysis most likely identifies what would be called administrative closures, whereby a school might close temporarily while it undergoes construction or district reshuffling. Finally, schools with more than 100 students at time of opening or closure were selected for this analysis. (See Supplemental Materials for an a map of all Twin Cities Metro school status by year.)
What school districts expereinced the most administrative closures?
Among schools that experienced administrative closures, what racial groups are most impacted over time?
Limitations
Any estimates of counts of people affected by school closures will impacted by the limitations of estimating school closures themselves. The figures below estimate the impact of school closures on students across the metro.
Within districts, are schools that closed more likely to have students of color and on free or reduced lunch programs?
Analysis Description
This estimate compares the annual district median proportion of Black, Hispanic, and BIPOC students, as well as those on free or reduced lunch, to each individual school and plots the difference. It’s stratified by whether or not a school experienced a closure and faceted by the racial or economic metric of interest. Schools that are above the 0.0 reference line indicate that their respective demographics are above the annual district mean, whereas those below the reference line indicate their respective demographics are below the annual district mean.
