Are school closings discriminatory?

Chicago returned to the center of the national debate over the future of public education this week as the city’s school board voted to shut down 50 schools. The decision, which could be derailed by a lawsuit, would result in the biggest single round of school closings in United States history.

Closing schools that are deemed underutilized or underperforming and transferring the students to better-equipped schools is a major tenet of the Obama Administration’s education policy. Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, utilized the approach while he was running Chicago’s school system, but many other cities have embraced it...