While urban schools are disproportionately at risk of being shuttered, rural communities may have a harder time making up for their loss, finds a new study by the Urban Institute.
Researchers tracked school closures and new school openings from 2003 to 2014. In that time, about 2 percent of all schools closed; those with mostly poor or black students were more likely to be shuttered in urban and suburban communities.
Although urban schools made up only 14 percent of all schools during that time, they accounted for 21 percent of all schools closed. But in urban areas, 24 percent of the schools that closed were replaced by a new school serving the same grades within a half mile, compared with only 13 percent of suburban closures and 17 percent for rural closures.
