U.S. News

At a February board meeting for Memphis-Shelby county schools in Tennessee, a parent of five children who currently or formerly attended Ida B Wells Academy, an alternative education school, asked board members a question.

“This is a high-performing school. This is not a school in crisis,” she said. “So I respectfully ask, why are we considering closing a school that is working?”

Indeed, while only 23% of students at the K-8 school tested at or above grade level in English language arts and 27% tested at or above grade level in math – which was below state averages – that was still better than the district’s Chickasaw middle school, where only 7% of students tested at or above grade level in English and less than 5% did so in math, according to state data.

But the district was still considering closing both those two schools – and three others too – in large part because student enrollment had plummeted, which meant the district was not using parts of old buildings that required significant maintenance.

The district is one among many in the United States that have closed schools and are considering closing more. One of the primary reasons is that many adults in the US are simply not having kids, or having fewer of them. And an increasing number of those who do are instead sending their kids to private schools or homeschooling them.

I vividly recall when the Ashland, Ore., school district closed two of its five elementary schools. This was in the early aughts, and people were up in arms. But the reality was, the city was bifurcating into retirees from California seeking "cheap" housing (pricing out families with young kids -- we were already above $400K median 20 years ago, in a city of 20,000) and college students who not could afford anything but the dorms.