The Upside to One Urban District’s School Closings: African Americans Achieve in Income Balanced Schools:

In 2003, in an effort to address St. Louis Public Schools’ (SLPS’) declining enrollment and debt, the interim superintendent closed 16 schools. In 2016, more than a decade since the school closings, the enrollment dwindled from 44,000 students to half that number. This study is an examination of the closed schools to determine if displaced African American children from the shuttered schools were better off as a result of attending the replacement schools. The findings suggest SLPS’ replacement schools were not better than the shuttered schools as was predicted in the SLPS 2003 Plan. Instead, we found displaced African American children who attended income imbalanced SLPS and charter schools in St. Louis had fewer children proficient on the state’s English Language Arts (ELA) assessment than their peers who participated in the Voluntary Interdistrict Transfer Program (VITP). The implications of these findings in the use of school closings as reform initiatives are discussed.