Social and political scientists have long regarded the US public school system as the primary institution through which students and parents develop the civic skills and social values to become good, productive, and informed citizens. Schools also provide critical services to citizens, including meals, family planning resources, health care, and counseling. Yet, for more than two decades, policy makers across the United States have closed public schools at historic rates, which they contend improves school quality and student performance. How do mass public school closures affect the democratic participation of citizens most affected by these policies? Who do these affected citizens hold responsible for school closures in their neighborhoods? Do school closures have consequences for affected citizens’ belief in American democracy? These are the central questions that animate Sally A. Nuamah’s new book, Closed for Democracy.
With roughly 1,000 public schools shuttered annually, affecting more than 200,000 students, Nuamah argues that the increase in public-school closures across the United States over the past two decades reflects a “new era of mass school closure.” Unlike the first wave of closures that primarily affected rural schools during the early twentieth century, the current wave of closures is greater in scale, is principally centralized in urban areas, and disproportionately affects low-income and Black communities. Nuamah further argues that closures have proceeded despite strong objections from these communities, finding that even when citizens successfully fight to keep schools open, their engagement with the closure process ultimately undermines their faith and participation in American democracy.
The current era of mass public-school closure was precipitated by federal education reform policies like the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top in 2009. These laws established new academic standards, imposing severe penalties on schools in which students failed to achieve those standards. Advocates and policy makers supporting school closure contend that population loss and underenrollment, poor academic performance, and cost savings accrued through school privatization and competition with charter schools justify these harsh policies. Yet, researchers have found no compelling evidence that closures lead to either cost savings or improvements in student performance (p. 8).
Closed for Democracy uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the effect that school closures have on the political beliefs and civic participation of citizens in two US cities: Chicago and Philadelphia. These two case studies were selected because of their large Black populations (32% in Chicago and 43% in Philadelphia): they reflect the racial residential segregation characteristic of much of urban America. In 2013, both cities experienced the highest number of school closures in their recent histories: 49 in Chicago and 23 in Philadelphia. Despite accounting for roughly 50% of total public-school enrollment in these cities, 80–90% of students attending these shuttered schools were Black (p. 16). Still, the education policy process differs between the two cities: Chicago’s is governed by mayoral appointees, whereas Philadelphia’s public schools are controlled by gubernatorial appointees.
Closed for Democracy principally relies on an original nationwide dataset developed by Nuamah that combines the locations of all public-school closures in the United States between 1994 and 2014 with data from surveys administered to citizens of Chicago and Philadelphia that focus on education and politics. Together, these data are used to illuminate the relationship between race, proximity to public-school closures, and political participation. Additionally, Nuamah draws on more than 100 interviews, including ethnographic observations between 2012 and 2017, to interrogate educational attitudes and provide deeper insights about the political consequences of school closures. Nuamah’s methodology places the targets of school closure—Black low-income citizens, particularly women—at the center of analysis and examines how closure policies affect their political beliefs and actions.
Nuamah’s study yields important insights regarding public attitudes toward school closures. In Chicago, for example, Blacks and Latinos expressed high levels of opposition to school closure compared to Whites, who strongly supported closure policies. Differences in racial attitudes toward school closure policies are rooted in communities’ direct experiences with past closures. For Blacks and Latinos who experienced the brunt of school closures in Chicago, they framed closure policies as racist, whereas Whites justified them as fair responses to a real public-school crisis.
During the closure process, districts are required to hold community meetings to inform the public about proposed school closures and allow citizens to comment on the proposals. Through her analysis of community meetings in Chicago and Philadelphia, Nuamah reveals how citizens affected by school closures translated their negative beliefs about these policies into blame or approval of school officials and political leaders. In Chicago, she finds that Black citizens affected by closures and who attended community meetings were the most likely group to blame then-Mayor Rahm Emmanuel—not Chicago’s school board—for the wave of closures that swept the city in 2013.
Although targets of school closure policy tend to be low income and less educated and therefore likely lack “formal political knowledge,” they gained understanding about the policy process and political power through their participation in community meetings. Nuamah describes this “political learning experience” in Philadelphia, where the policy context and process differed from Chicago’s. Given that authority over Philadelphia’s public school system was transferred to the governor’s office after a state takeover in 2001, affected citizens overwhelmingly blamed Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett instead of Mayor Michael Nutter.
This book not only demonstrates which officials were blamed for school closures but importantly also highlights how citizens translated that blame into formal political action. Using survey data, the author shows how the process of school closure stimulated the political participation of affected Blacks, at least in the short term. For instance, in Chicago, Blacks living in closure areas were highly unlikely to attend political meetings before the announcement of school closures during the 2013–14 school year. However, after 2014, these citizens became the most likely group to attend political meetings, which Nuamah uses as a measure of political participation.
In the long run, however, the policy process fostered deep distrust, fatigue, and disillusionment among citizens who participated in the closure process. Even when they successfully mobilized to keep schools open, their experience with an unfair policy process led to reduced interest in future political participation. Nuamah refers to this lack of interest in future participation as “collective participatory debt—a type of mobilization fatigue that transpires when citizens who are engaged in the policy process are met with a lack of democratic transparency and responsiveness, despite high levels of repeated participation” (p. 110).
Policy feedback scholars will find Closed for Democracy useful because the book demonstrates how racialized education policies have broader import for both nonelectoral and electoral participation, widening the scope of political outcomes of interest beyond the voting booth. Scholars of racial and ethnic politics (REP) and urban studies, too, will find significant value in Nuamah’s book. For example, by showing how Black “citizens use relevant and recent policy experiences to form opinions” (p. 40) about school closures, Nuamah’s work expands theories of group consciousness and linked fate, which explain Black political attitudes solely as a function of the historical experiences of the racial group. Overall, Nuamah’s book is sure to spark debate among REP scholars and stimulate broader discussions regarding the contemporary state of Black citizenship.
