St. Louis is a poor city. Its school district serves a higher share of children living in poverty than 95% of communities nationwide.
Decades of research has shown that growing up in poverty hurts academic outcomes. So what can reasonably be expected of children in places like St. Louis? Through no fault of their own, they are more likely to have lower reading and math scores. But how much lower?
Policymakers rarely ask these types of questions. But without controlling for poverty, a school or district might look “bad” mainly because its students started off further behind. On the other end, a school might look “good” largely because its students came in the door with numerous advantages.
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In a recent analysis with The 74’s Eamonn Fitzmaurice, I went looking for school districts across the country that were outperforming expectations. Given their demographics, which were doing the best job of helping students learn to read? Unfortunately, St. Louis was not one of those positive outliers.