Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network reports here on the sad story of what happened to public education in St. Louis, once a mecca of public education. The city has elegant public school buildings that were designed for eternity, but now stand shuttered and desolate.
What happened?
Racism. Segregation. White flight. Civic abandonment. Economic decline.
Remedies? The Broad Foundation and the Koch brothers to the rescue (not). Politicians committed to privatization. Business management. School closings, almost entirely in African-American neighborhoods. Incompetent business leadership. Some charter schools with high test scores, most with lower scores than the public schools. Charter scams and scandals. Profiteering. Loss of accreditation. State takeover. A new superintendent, determined to revive public education. Improved scores and graduation rates. Accreditation restored. New public schools with selective admissions, competing with charter schools.
Bryant visits some of the beautiful, abandoned schools and draws lessons from them.
“Many of these schools, like Cleveland High, are grand structures, built a hundred years ago or more, in a style that features intricate brick and stone exteriors with turrets and arches and spacious interiors with vaulted ceilings and sunlit classrooms.
“But the story of St. Louis’s schools is about so much more than the buildings themselves. It’s a story about an American ideal and what and who gutted that ideal.
“It’s also a story that merits important attention today as prominent education policy leaders, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contend conversations about education should not even include the subjects of buildings and systems.
“Today’s current thinking that learning can “occur anyplace, anytime” prompts entrepreneurs to create networks of online schools and charter school operators to open schools in retail storefronts and abandoned warehouses.
“But the grand schools St. Louis built for its children caution that the permanency of schools as buildings and institutions is worth defending.
“More than a century ago, St. Louis embarked on a revolution in education that made the city’s schools the jewel of the Midwest and a model for urban school districts around the nation.
“I was recently standing in at one of the places where the revolution started: Elliot School at 4242 Grove St. It was padlocked with a graffiti-covered “For Sale” sign out front. The district closed the school in 2004.”
Footnote: Missouri legislation now debating expansion of charter schools to other districts.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The publicly-operated school system in St. Louis is under the same dynamic, that virtually all inner-cities are experiencing. It is an example of “creative destruction”. As the tax base and population implodes, the city infrastructure is a dinosaur, and it will implode as well.
The flip side of the decline of inner-city school systems, is the improvement and modernization of suburban school systems, which have a tax base, and the population which needs to be served.
I remember well, when General Motors closed the Corvette plant in St. Louis back in 1980. The factory closed, and GM opened a new plant in Bowling Green KY. The school system in St. Louis downsized, and the Bowling Green KY school system had to bring in “portable classrooms” (trailers).
Growth and decline. This is the hallmark of a dynamic economy.
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Charles,
You are a very sick person. There is nothing creative about the destruction of a great city. This was destruction generated by racism. Surely you don’t approve. If you do, that is sick.
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It was not racism, that caused GM to move from St. Louis to Bowling Green. The factory was obsolete, and the cost of rehabilitating the factory was more than the cost to move. GM picked up an obsolete air-conditioning factory that had belonged to Chrysler (Airtemp division). Some GM employees chose to relocate to Bowling Green (GM paid for the relocation costs). It was a sound business decision.
Sometimes older cities bounce back. Parts of Alexandria VA were decaying rapidly. The old areas were bought up and are now experiencing gentrification, and property values are shooting up.
There is no “ying” without a “yang”.
I neither approve nor disapprove of the decline of St. Louis. I just accept it a fact of life.
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Many people accept racism as a fact of life.
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Charles,
May I recommend that you see the wonderful 1940s film “Meet Me in St. Louis”? That was the idyllic Midwestern city, imagined by Vincent Minelli, but true enough to the Americans of the time.
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Are you for real? That film is about the 1904 World’s Fair, and it was made on a Hollywood backlot. St. Louis was a vibrant, dynamic city, and the “gateway to the west”, that is why the arch is there.
The west got settled, people moved on. St. Louis was a producer of beer, but the breweries shut down during prohibition. The city experienced a decline, but bounced back.
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Charles,
You probably don’t know this, but St. Louis was once the education leader of the U.S. One of the greatest national figures in American education, William Torrey Harris, was superintendent of schools and went on to become the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 18 years! He was also a leading Hegelian philosopher.
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Charles,
You are in the thrall of a fundamentalist mindset. Laissez-faire economics is your god. It is possible to preserve old architecture and cities and people, and still have a healthy economy. See Germany. It is a scandal that we allow our beautiful old buildings to decay. It is a scandal that we allow communities to spiral down into despair, opioid addition and crime. In the big picture, it is not economical at all. Much of America has turned into an ugly wasteland because of mentalities like yours. Why not preserve our heritage and our people as Europe does, instead of consigning places and people to the trash heap? I once heard a visitor from Europe say, why visit different American cities –there’s nothing to see. I agree –compared to Europe, we have mostly banal junk in our cities –much of the nice stuff is decaying or demolished. The suburbs are shiny but cheaply-built and will soon be demolished too. This is no way to run a society. St. Louis built high schools like cathedrals. We need to return to the cathedral-building mindset, not the throw-away mindset.
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@ Ponderosa:
I believe in free markets, and capitalism. If you ever lived in a communist country, with a planned economy, you would too.
I lived in Germany, as well. They have cities going back several centuries, and even some structures going back to the Roman Empire.
Some American cities have decayed, of course. The loss of low-end manufacturing jobs, changing demographics, erosion of the tax base, etc. have all contributed. Six blocks from the capitol dome (I live in WashDC metro) there is an open-air drug market. Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, all decayed, factories closed, ancient buildings closed.
The housing projects have gangs of fatherless boys, running around terrorizing people, and dealing drugs. There are sections of Atlanta GA, where the postal service is afraid to deliver the mail. Chicago is basically a war-zone, where they are stacking up bodies like cordwood. There have been 242 homicides in Baltimore this year, 7 over the Labor Day weekend. Death does not take a holiday in Baltimore. And you want to preserve empty school buildings in the combat zone.
We could preserve the old buildings, it costs money. Our nation is $20 Trillion dollars in debt, how do you propose to pay the costs of rehabilitating old school buildings, that have no students?
What do you mean by a “cathedral-building mindset”. Structures are not sacred. When a building or a school has outlived its usefulness, it should be demolished, and the land put to productive use.
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Charles, do you think the Capitol dome and the rest of DC is the fruit of free-market fundamentalist thinking? Have you notice that the Founding Fathers didn’t talk much about the invisible hand of the market? Have you noticed they had different values? Have you noticed that Rome and the Medieval Church had other values? Do you think European cities would look the way they do if all people cared about was market efficiency?
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Tear down the Capitol and sell it to developers. Creative destruction. Nice condos. Good location.
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Q Charles, do you think the Capitol dome and the rest of DC is the fruit of free-market fundamentalist thinking? Have you notice that the Founding Fathers didn’t talk much about the invisible hand of the market? Have you noticed they had different values? Have you noticed that Rome and the Medieval Church had other values? Do you think European cities would look the way they do if all people cared about was market efficiency? END Q
I live in suburban WashDC. The US Constitution specifically authorizes the federal government to set up a national capital.
see
The Congress shall have Power To… exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States… (The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17)
Washington DC, is a “planned community”, and the various buildings contained therein, are part of the plan.
There is nothing “free market” about Washington DC. The city was built on a malarial swamp, it has no natural harbor (only small ports at Alexandria and Georgetown). No businessman in his right mind, would have located a city there, in 1789. Even today, there are no manufacturing jobs anywhere in the District. There are no new-car dealerships anywhere in the District. The entire city is government and tourism (lobbying firms, lawyers, and some non-profits and foreign embassies), and that is it.
For the first 150 years of our republic, foreign diplomats posted to WashDC, were paid hardship bonuses. WashDC is a city of southern efficiency, and northern charm.
So what?
The founders were a mix of lawyers, farmers, doctors, etc. There was not an economist in the bunch. Adam Smith penned “The Wealth of Nations”, in 1776, it is reasonable to assume that at least some of them had an acquaintance with Smith’s work.
I am hardly an expert on the Roman Catholic Church, and the medieval church. I do know that the Roman church forbade autopsies for 600 years, and the only reliable textbooks dealing with the human anatomy, were from the Islamic world. The church forbade the loaning of money at interest, so the Jewish financiers had a virtual monopoly on money lending. Again, so what?
It took a Protestant Reformation, to crush the economic hold, which the Roman church had on Europe. Martin Luther is not often thought of as an economist, but his impact on the economy of Europe is unmistakable. see
Click to access maxweber_jeea_paper.pdf
I have lived in Europe (Two years in Germany, one year in Paris). The cities of Europe were located at various places, like the seacoast (Marseille) , or at the confluence of rivers (Koblenz). Cities grew and faded at a much slower rate in the middle ages, because the economy was not as dynamic, and the wide majority of the populace were engaged in agriculture.
A dynamic economy, is the result of industrialization.
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Charles, my point is not that free market economics are bad; it’s that you shouldn’t let it become a fundamentalist faith. There are other competing value systems out there. Kind-hearted Christian values are not perfectly compatible with free market values. Love of beauty is not perfectly compatible with free market values. Concern for the environment, concern for justice, concern for civic cohesion –all of these human values are worth considering. Sometimes the free market harmonizes with them; sometimes it does not. Pretending that the free market is the only legitimate human value seems to me an intellectually cowardly way of dodging the complexity and messiness of reality. In a narrow, econometric sense, it may not be the wisest use of tax dollars to build a grand marble Capitol dome, but I’m really glad that money was spent. Would you rather the legislature be housed in a Walmart?
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“As the tax base and population implodes….”
I love your passive voice. This imploding is something that just happens. Poof! Out of the blue. Who can explain it? Such a mystery….
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There is no mystery about it. Just simple Economics 101.
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I think it is better described as Racism 101.
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You cannot blame the decline of some American cities on racism. A declining industrial plant, changing demographics, international competition, decaying infrastructure, etc. etc.
You cannot credit the growth of such places as Seattle, or Dallas on the lack of racism.
New technologies like computer software and hi-tech made Santa Clara Calif, grow. Toyota, Nissan, and VW assisted in the decline of Detroit. When Corvette moved to Bowling Green, it added several hundred recession-proof jobs. Monterey Calif had a huge fish canning industry in the 1930’s. but the ocean currents changed, and the canneries all shut down.
New England had textile mills, and produced the nation’s cloth. The mills moved to South Carolina (See “Norma Rae”), and then moved on to Hong Kong.
A dynamic economy has winners and losers. Do not blame it on racism.
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Yes, Charles, white-flight suburbs with restrictive covenants, federal subsidies for home owners (but not for renters) bank and insurance redlining of urban neighborhoods, the Interstate Highway System (which eviscerated those same neighborhoods), willful destruction of public housing (see the Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis)… yes, it’s all just like the force of gravity, isn’t it?
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I listed factors – restrictive covenants based on race, corporate redlining, highways intentionally rammed through urban neighborhoods – that have an inarguable racial component, and you ignored them all.
You are very intellectually dishonest.
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Charles never listens. He will post the same comments anyway
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Q white-flight suburbs with restrictive covenants, federal subsidies for home owners (but not for renters) bank and insurance redlining of urban neighborhoods, the Interstate Highway System (which eviscerated those same neighborhoods), willful destruction of public housing (see the Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis)… yes, it’s all just like the force of gravity, isn’t it? END Q
I listen and read. When inner cities lost jobs, they lost people. This should not come as a surprise.
The federal government encourages home ownership, through programs like the mortgage income tax deduction. Also FHA and VA loans. I obtained a VA loan, there was no question on the form about my race (I was in an inter-racial marriage at the time).
Do you really believe that in 2017, that people are still participating in housing “covenants”, and refusing to sell their homes to racial minorities?
I have heard of red-lining before, of course, and I am sure that these practices contributed to the expansion of suburbs, and the decline of inner-cities. Banks and Insurance companies are in business to turn a profit, not to perform social engineering.
The Interstate and Defense highway systems plowed over some neighborhoods, but do you really think that there was a racial component to the decision to modernize the national highway system? You cannot blame engineering on racism!
I think that we can all agree, that the decline of our cities, and the rise of suburbs, are the result of a number of contributory factors. But to blame everything on racism, is absurd. see
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449365/left-equates-western-civilization-whiteness
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The National Review is NOT a peer reviewed journal.
It is opinion.
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Charles,
OMG and HUH?
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Has anyone here ever made a payroll? Or even studied basic economics? Owensboro KY, used to have a factory that made vacuum tubes for radios. When GE developed transistors, the tube factory closed, and people were laid off. The “creation” of solid-state electronics caused the “destruction” of the vacuum-tube industry.
Higher gasoline prices caused people to abandon big cars. Toyota, Nissan, Peugeot, and VW sold more (small) cars. Oldsmobile closed down. People who worked for Oldsmobile lost their jobs.
Honda Motor company opened a plant in Marysville, OH. People moved to Marysville to work for Honda.
This is the “ebb and flow” of a dynamic economy.
The loss of low-end manufacturing jobs has contributed to the loss of population in inner-cities. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, etc. all have lost jobs and population that will never come back.
If you choose to blame these dynamics on racism, that is your privilege.
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“Growth and decline. This is the hallmark of a dynamic economy.”
Growth and decline are the hallmark of deregulated capitalism… and left to its own devices capitalism will devolve into a plutocracy. It’s happened before and it is happening again. Maybe a trust-busting President who loves the wilderness will come to our rescue… or a President who is willing to use government funds to provide jobs that will improve our infrastructure… is there a Roosevelt out there?
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Wgersen,
Exactly right!
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“You cannot blame the decline of some cities on racism” You absolutely can blame the decline on racism and its subtle & not so subtle application to communities. . Richard Rothstein, research associate of the Economic Policy Institute just wrote a new book, ‘The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America.’ Government policies have codified racial segregation long after the US Civil War. You can listen to his interview here:
https://majority.fm/2017/08/30/830-the-color-of-law-how-our-government-segregated-america-w-richard-rothstein-m/
Your belief in creative destruction dogma ignores the fact that there is nothing creative about the outcomes & Lapore points out the arrogant Clay Christianson got very many things wrong.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine
Even that socialist rag (not) Economist agreed with Lapore
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21679179-clay-christensen-should-not-be-given-last-word-disruptive-innovation-disrupting-mr
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Wanna introduce some fascinating city to you for your future settlement, Charles?
Try Monbestu, Hokkaido, Japan. Up in the north. An outdated town left far behind modernity. Extremely small population. Very few westerners. No English language spoken. Local store owners still being intimidated with skin colors(white, black, and brown).
Hanging out with a tiny number of Russian sailors and Chinese tourists is more than a blessing.
A perfect place for you to snuggle into the amnesia bubble so that you can forget about growth/decline of economy in America. When you are the last person, you turn out the light.
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Thanks Diane!
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Thank YOU, Jeff! Great article!
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I need Charles commentary at the Post Dispatch. I am barred from having any comments published for the readers of the Post Dispatch, except current affairs. And even though my comments there disappear to the outer pages very soon…it is plain to see….they need to make me shut up there, too.
HUH? sad story of education in St. Louis? Washington Post?
“My immediate reaction is that anyone who is connected with reporting education in St. Louis, should delete this article from their ability to read it, and carry earplugs to avoid all talk of it, and give serious consideration to offering massages, belly rubs, and anything else, should someone of importance feel offended.
Beth O’Malley should be put in charge of forums, so she could bar me from offering comments here, in addition to my present status of being barred from commenting after all articles.
I do have to say…and I am not technologically adept….that my initial phone conversation with Jeff Bryant was electrifying. For both of us.”
How often can you send someone a link to a former board member with 35,000 words to a nationally known author like Jeff and he calls you and says…this stuff is really good, I am up to chapter 7 of it. Peter Downs, I trust, turned out to be a valuable source of information.
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Another example of how St Louis does not have a free press. The St Louis media have not reported on the FBI raids on the headquarters of the Gulen Concept charter school chain. St Louis has three Gulen Concept charter schools (Gateway Science Academies), but St Louisans need to read the Chicago Sun Times to find out about the raids.
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I grew up in St. Louis, attending Laclede School in a neighborhood at the northwest corner of the city. Mostly four-family flats and on the western and northern edges country pastures. Every ethnic origin, every religion and every economic range imaginable. We all got along and made many enduring friendships. For those of us who were white (me) and wanted to know black kids several organizations had quietly set that opportunity up. Laclede was a William B. Ittner buildiing, with all the genius, imagination and vision that implies. It is still there looking the same as when I entered in the Fall of 1944,but with some great additions. The neighbohood is in bad shape, but the school continues excellent. From Laclede I went to Soldan High School, another Ittner building, gorgeous inside and out, with the educational bar high and the range of student activities awesome. Only one semester there as we moved to the Normandy School District a five minute drive away in St. Louis County. We did not even know there was a Normandy School District. Most of the Senior High buildings on a California-style college campus, were Ittner buildings and life at Normandy schools proved years ahead of what was being achieved elsewhere, and life-transforming. I now produce the Normandy alumni newspaper. When integration came in, Normandy moved ahead and instituted it before it was required and did fine for a decade, but then ran into trouble because no one understood the changing challenges of the communities the district served as the racial and economic realties changed. It seems to me the entire St. Louis-St. Louis county community fell way way behind in addressing the need to focus on a changing dynamic of life and lost precious years in tackling racism, poverty, growing crime and splintered communication within daily life. The gorgeous city schools mostly are still there, but without a beating heart. I left St. Louis in 1964, stolen away by an offer to start a high school journalism program at the University of Chicago. I taught there 52 years and as the years passed and returned to visit my home town I became aware just how destructive racial prejudice and hate can be there and when as a journalist I did a feature story on Michael Brown I was vilified repeatedly and publicly threatened because my story gave a full, rounded picture of Michael. I don’t come home much anymore.
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Thank you for sharing your story with us, Wayne. Very insightful.
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thank you chris. The media ineptitude in St. Louis fits perfectly with the rest of the history. I keep telling them they need a forum for education at least equal in stature with the one on soccer…..if we had one….I would ask…are you sure there are three?…Maybe there were or are. I am pretty sure there is now just one Gulen school, but an effort is constantly made to be careless with reporting of information.
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Go to the Concept school website. There are two elementary schools (Smiley and Gardenville) campuses and a high school on Fyler west of Kingshighway).
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Where to start, where to start. Jeff’s piece is one of the better explanations I’ve read in a while on what has happened with public education in the City of St. Louis, there are still many many other explanations, historical information that is missing. But that would take a tome the size of War and Peace to include all that might be included, so my intent is not to fault Jeff at all.
One large influence being the quite large percentage, 35-40% of students who historically attended parochial, mainly Catholic schools, but a few others thrown in and how that played out in assisting the segregating of housing patterns. And those K-12 Catholic school grads can be seen to have had significant civic/political clout over the years.
Another would be the second largest business sector (behind beer) for most of the 1900s up to the 70s, the shoe industry. During the 60s and into the 70s the decline of many shoe factory jobs, none of it was automated as it is now in other parts of the world, left many without substantial employment. I say that my dad died at the right time, 1975, as his business of rebuilding and repairing industrial shoe and sewing machinery was slowly going under due to a lack of customers-all the customers closed up and went overseas.
A third aspect was hinted at in the article and that is the separation of the City of St. Louis from its respective county which then limited how large the tax base would be. Personally I think that has been positive in that it has resulted in smaller towns wherein a small town atmosphere obtains in the areas surrounding the city. But as the 1900s wore on that division would serve to hinder the city’s ability to recuperate from the business sector drain.
Along with that is the fact of the Mississippi River which served to limit the eastward expansion of the city as many businesses located on the Illinois side of the river. Eastward movement, though, of people hasn’t stopped.
And, finally, I would have to agree with Charles that racism was not a primary factor in the St. Louis Public School District sharp decline. For me, it was many adults, both white and black, who did the students wrong. StLPSD has been known for nepotism and financial chicanery throughout much of its history in both white and black administrations.
And again, to use test scores the way they were used to bludgeon the schools to near death was done by too many adults, and there are too many who still believe that test scores are the best indicator (sic) of teaching and learning effectiveness.
It hurt me to walk into the high school from which my mom graduated back in the mid 30s. One of those beautiful buildings to which Jeff refers-Roosevelt High School. It is still stunningly beautiful on the outside, but when I went there about 5-6 years ago for an SOS conference (Deb Meier was the keynote speaker) I was thoroughly appalled at the interior condition, a foul smelling graffiti strewn interior, bathrooms vandalized, what was once a beautiful auditorium trashed, no screens on windows and no AC. And students still were attending. I felt so sorry for the students who attended. Adults letting children down, indeed!!
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You gotta love WP, comment awaiting moderation.
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Additionally, a lot of white people pulled their children out once the racial segregation ended. Middle class whites moved to suburbs, enrolled in private or parochial schools. Tax base suffered and funding suffered.
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The worst Se of segregation and racism I’ve ever seen. No black students basically in public schools in the city and those schools woefully underfunded. Nothing but white flight back into the city and also prolific charter schools that don’t perform better than the few public charters. And black kids, in the suburbs in underfunded schools and charters. This is a mess much like lausd.
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The US Dept of Justice is overseeing the re-segregation of America’s publicly operated schools. see
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-department-of-justice-is-overseeing-the-resegregation-of-american-schools/
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This is the Jeff Sessions’ effect. He supports racial segregation.
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One city that has turned around in Pittsburgh, PA. The city was once the steel capital of the world. The city was built at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers. Rivers were the “highways” of transportation, then. The city is near deposits of coal and iron, so the steel industry located there.
Steel moved to Japan and Korea, and other places. The Steel industry collapsed (in Pittsburgh). The city embraced high-tech and innovation, and is roaring back.
see
https://www.brookings.edu/research/capturing-the-next-economy-pittsburghs-rise-as-a-global-innovation-city/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=56298642
The steel industry in Pittsburgh imploded, largely due to excessive labor costs. The high-tech industry blossomed there. This is the “Creative destruction”, that classical economists describe.
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