School Closures in Chicago: What Happened to the Teachers?

In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education closed 47 elementary schools, directly 16 affecting 13,000 students and 900 teachers. The closures created employment uncertainty for 17 closed-school teachers, and this paper investigates the labor market consequences for teachers. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares the exit rates of closed-school teachers to teachers in schools that only experienced threat of closure. We estimate that the closures resulted in a near doubling of teacher exit among teachers in closed schools, particularly low-performing teachers. We also find that, among closed-school teachers, Black teachers were more likely to return than White teachers. Given the nationwide trend of school closures for budgetary or performance reasons, this paper has implications for strategic retention of effective teachers. [This paper was published in "Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis" (EJ1262513).]