Impacts of Public-Private School Choice on Public Schools in the St. Louis Area

Abstract

St. Louis Public Schools was once a thriving school district, leading the way for cities west of the Mississippi, but since 1967 the district has been declining in enrollment and is less than 1/4th of its peak size (Feldmann and Watson 2012). This thesis has two main research questions: the first is how policy changes have affected enrollment and segregation of St. Louis area schools from 1991 to 2017. The second is how segregation and enrollment have impacted school district achievement. The primary study area includes St. Louis City Public Schools, which is located in St. Louis City County, and the more than twenty suburban public school districts surrounding the city. For the first research question, I used temporal GIS to see if segregation has increased in St. Louis area school districts from 1991 to 2017, and to see when inner-city school districts started losing enrollment to private, charter, or surrounding suburban schools. Then, using historical and political context, I explored how desegregation and school-choice efforts have affected enrollment and segregation. I found that the amount of segregated school districts increased from 63% of school districts in 1991 to 91% in 2017. Furthermore, non-segregated school districts lost enrollment from 1991 to 2017. For the second research question, I used geographically weighted regression of Missouri school districts to analyze the impact of district indicators-including enrollment and racial demographics-on student achievement. I found that enrollment had a positive correlation with school district achievement, and segregation had a negative correlation with school district achievement for school districts with a greater percentage of minorities. This thesis provides a comprehensive display of the changes in enrollment over time alongside the historical context, in order to provide a better understanding of the impacts of policy changes and school choice on St. Louis schools.