Closed Schools, Open Markets - A Hot Spot Spatial Analysis of School Closures and Charter Openings in Detroit

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanford

Study examines how traditional public school closures and charter school openings are distributed across Detroit neighborhoods, using geographic information systems and hot spot geospatial analysis across three education policy eras. Research questions address both spatial distribution and whether statistically significant spatial clusters (“hot spots”) form. Theoretical framing uses rollback and rollout neoliberalism, linking policy context to education restructuring. Results indicate charter openings occur more often in concentrated hot spots than traditional school closures.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Research Purpose and Questions

Theoretical Framework: Rollback and Rollout Neoliberalism

Methods: GIS Hot Spot Geospatial Analysis

Findings and Implications

AERA Open April-June 2019, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 1–14 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858419850097 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2019. [http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Closed Schools, Open Markets: A Hot Spot Spatial Analysis of School Closures and Charter Openings in Detroit Terrance L. Green University of Texas at Austin Joanna D. Sánchez Excelencia in Education Andrene J. Castro University of Texas at Austin The purpose of this study is to use geographic information systems to map the spatial distribution of traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools in Detroit. To achieve this purpose, we examine the following research questions: (a) How are traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools spatially distributed throughout neighborhoods in Detroit during three education policy eras? (b) How, if at all, might these schools’spatial patterns cluster in certain neighborhoods to create hot spots of traditional public school closures and/or charter school openings? As such, this descriptive study uses hot spot geospatial analysis to identify whether the spatial occurrence of traditional public school closuresand charter school openings is randomly distributed or if it occurs in statistically significant spatial clusters. Rollback and rollout neoliberalism is used to theoretically frame the study and guide the analysis. Findings suggest that charter school openings occur more often in hot spots or concentrated ways than the closure of traditional public schools in Detroit. We conclude with implications for future research. Keywords: school closures, charter schools, urban school reform, neoliberalism Neoliberal education policies are restructuring traditional public school systems across the United States (Lipman, 2011) . This restructuring has disproportionately affected urban school districts and neighborhoods of color. Arguably, Detroit and its traditional public schools have been hit hardest by neoliberal restructuring, as evidenced by the district’s near bankruptcy, the district being under state control from 1999 to 2016, and the district having the second-largest charter school market in the nation (Arsen, DeLuca, Ni, & Bates, 2016; Khalifa, Douglas, & Chambers, 2016) . Additionally, neoliberal policies have partly contributed to the proliferation of charter schools and >200 traditional public school closures during the last decade and half in Detroit (Grover & van der Velde, 2016). However, most mainstream narratives frame school closures in Detroit a-historically, a-racially, and only as the result of various social, demographic, and economic factors. These factors include population decline, uneven supply-and-demand dynamics, administrative incompetence, and fiscal mismanagement (Arsen et al., 2016) . While these factors are critical, to frame school closures in Detroit only as a result of these factors obscures the ways that neoliberal education policies influence school closures and how charter schools have been opened (Yoon, 2016) . We therefore argue that the closing of traditional public schools and the concurrent opening of charter schools, especially in Detroit, can “be best understood in relation to the construction of neoliberal, social,[education], and economic arrangements”(Lipman, 2008, p. 120) .1 By neoliberal, we mean “a loose set of ideas, [practices, and strategies], that market principles should govern how society should work”(Spence, 2015, p. 141). Neoliberalism thus engenders a policy context that rationalizes less state support for public schools, the privatization of public education, and the use of reforms such as charter schools as a policy mechanism for“educational transformation.” Despite this policy context, adearth of research has connected school closures in Detroit to the neol

FAQs

What is the study’s main purpose in Detroit’s education context?

To map where traditional public school closures and charter school openings occur across Detroit using GIS and hot spot geospatial analysis.

How are the research questions structured?

The study asks how both types of events are spatially distributed across neighborhoods and whether they cluster into statistically significant hot spots during three policy eras.

What do the findings suggest about hot spots of closures versus openings?

Charter school openings appear more frequently in hot spots or concentrated patterns than traditional public school closures in Detroit.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanford