Chicago closed 50 schools 10 years ago — we investigated how the city failed to live up to the promises it made then.

Here’s what a WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.

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• Education
• Race, Class & Communities

Ten years after Chicago closed 50 public schools, more than half remain shuttered and unused

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In 2013, the Chicago Public Schools permanently closed 50 underenrolled and low-performing schools in the largest mass closing in the nation’s history.

The closings affected 13,646 children from the shuttered elementary schools. As many as 17,000 more also were impacted because their schools were slated to take in students from the closed schools.

The Sun-Times and WBEZ examined promises made by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS officials that the students would be better off academically, that their new schools would be transformed and that the shuttered schools would be reborn as community assets. 

We also explored alternatives to mass closings. Chicago today faces an enrollment decline far worse than 10 years ago when the 50 schools were shuttered.

Here’s what we discovered:

• The kids: City officials promised that students would be more successful and reach their potential in new schools.

• Our finding: Academic outcomes for students from the closed schools aren’t better than for kids who went to similar schools that stayed open, an analysis of state data showed. And their outcomes were far worse than the city averages.

• Our finding: The “welcoming” schools that absorbed students after the closing, and the $155 million invested in them, weren’t protected by Chicago Public Schools over time. Most of these 49 welcoming schools are now struggling with declining enrollment and constrained budgets, just like the schools that closed in 2013.

• The buildings: Officials promised that all the empty school buildings would get a second life that would benefit the community.

• Our finding: More than half of the buildings emptied of children and teachers in 2013 still aren’t back in use 10 years later.

• The communities: Officials said redeveloping the closed school buildings could boost economic development and expand opportunities in neighborhoods around the city.

• Our finding: The areas around closed schools saw steeper population drops in the years after the 2013 closings than other areas, a Sun-Times and WBEZ analysis found. Majority-Black census tracts that included closed schools lost 9% of their population between 2013 and 2018. Black census tracts with schools that did not close saw a 3% decline.