This is an article from the 2026 Civitas Examiner (Volume 3, No. 2) and was written by one of our students, Coco. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
In the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis City– next to IKEA and across from a Planet Fitness– lies Metro Academic and Classical High School. Metro consistently ranks as one of the top public high schools in Missouri, with 99% of students showing proficiency in reading, and 89% showing proficiency in math, according to Niche. Two miles away– by way of Vandeventer and Page– sits Vashon High School, where only 12% of students are proficient in reading, and merely 5% are proficient in math.
Importantly, both Metro and Vashon belong to the same public school district: Saint Louis Public Schools.
Saint Louis Public Schools (more commonly known as SLPS) serves over 17,000 (mostly minority) St. Louis City area students across 68 schools. In January, the district caught national attention for losing full accreditation from the Missouri State Board of Education. This decision, while it may have come as a surprise to many, was certainly justified. For years, SLPS has struggled with internal corruption, constant leadership turnover, financial strain, and– most importantly for those 17,000 students– low academic performance and state test scores.
If one were to only look at schools like Metro or the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience—two SLPS schools that routinely outrank prestigious suburban counterparts like Ladue or Clayton—it would be difficult to believe that, district-wide, SLPS averages just 23% proficiency in reading and 19% in math. This massive chasm is the direct result of a deep educational disparity built into the structure of SLPS itself.
The SLPS system is made up of a mix of magnet and neighborhood schools. Schools like Metro and Collegiate were magnet schools, designed to be elite and attract a diverse range of high performing students across the St. Louis area. While such design was occurring, traditional neighborhood schools– like Vashon or Sumner High School– were largely left behind, causing them to absorb the effects of systemic disinvestment in their North City neighborhoods. Despite all of the good the creation of selective magnet schools has had for St. Louis, the investment into these few “high achieving” schools has caused concentrated poverty and fewer resources for others. As a student at Metro, it appears to me that SLPS leadership would rather shine a light on a few picture perfect schools than invest in the schools that have been left behind. Indeed, Metro and Collegiate are home to far more educational opportunities than any other city high schools. Metro boasts a prestigious International Baccalaureate program and both schools have a tremendous amount of AP (advanced placement) classes available. According to US News and World Report, Collegiate has an AP participation rate of 84%, Metro has one of 100%, while Clyde C. Miller Career Academy, Vashon, and Sumner have participation rates of 27%, 16%, and 22% respectively.
The concept of selective magnet schools is not inherently flawed, both Metro and Collegiate have benefited countless students. The crisis stems from the gatekeeping cycle the system enforces. For example, in order to get into Metro, one must score above the 70th percentile on a standardized test, have a letter grade of “C” or better in all subjects, have two recommendations, and at least 90% attendance. There are two main issues present with this criteria– which is similar for Collegiate– the first being that students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are significantly more likely to have poor attendance. According to the National Equity Atlas “Across all grade levels, Black students in high-poverty schools had a chronic absenteeism rate of 40 percent, nearly twice the rate of their counterparts in low-poverty schools (21 percent).” Of course, this would easily prevent a student from getting into a school like Metro or Collegiate, even if they were considered “smart enough” to get in. Not to mention that chronic absenteeism causes lower grades and test scores, something that will absolutely affect a student’s educational future.
The second issue is much more complex. There are two elementary schools in SLPS which are considered “gifted”: Wheeler Classical Junior Academy and Mallinckrodt Academy of Gifted Instruction. According to the SLPS website, both schools feed to McKinley for middle school. McKinley then creates a direct path to Metro or Collegiate. The issue is that in order to get into one of these elementary schools, a child must score at or above the 90th percentile on an IQ test. This system directly works against minority and impoverished students, who score an average of “6 points lower on an IQ test than their more affluent peers”, according to the Huffington Post. Additionally, both “gifted” schools are located in South City, making them geographically inaccessible to many families in North City– the very students who ultimately attend under-resourced schools like Vashon.
When students are denied the quality education they deserve due to geography or socioeconomic status, they are stripped of the ability to reach their full potential. Currently, this disproportionately affects Black students in North St. Louis, who continue to receive a vastly lower quality of education than their peers on the other side of the Delmar Divide.
A school district cannot be called successful when its achievements are concentrated on two schools out of 68. Metro and Collegiate shouldn’t be the rare exceptions to the rule of failure within SLPS, they should be a model for quality of education in every school in the city. Until resources, and opportunities are distributed appropriately, SLPS’s systemic divide will continue to leave St. Louis’s most vulnerable students behind.
