Still Unequal: 4 Infographics on the Root Causes of Education Inequity in St. Louis
St. Louis schools are nearly as Segregated as in the 1960s with uneven state funding and inequitable property taxes.
“Our education system is doing exactly what it was built to do: affording better opportunities to White, wealthy students at the expense of poor, Black students.”
— Still Separate, Still Unequal
In the fall of 2020, Forward Through Ferguson released Still Separate, Still Unequal: A Call to Level the Uneven Education Playing Field in St. Louis. In crafting this accountability tool for our community, our approach was–as it always is–unflinching.
Still Separate, Still Unequal certainly engages the racial education outcome gaps with which St. Louisans are all too familiar: “the achievement gap, the discipline gap, the summer slide…” Our report takes that engagement a step further, though, by centering not the inequities themselves, but rather the upstream factors that allow them to persist–and that make them nearly inevitable.
Our analysis of education inequity in the St. Louis region calls out the policies that have long-served to protect the status quo while inflicting generational damage onto communities of color.
Still Separate, Still Unequal is an advocacy tool for all St. Louisans: from parents, to grassroots organization members, to teachers, to lawmakers. Through our combined resources and resolve, we can challenge the policies and systems that stand in the way of Racial Equity. Together, we can design a St. Louis that sets the national standard for sustainable Education Equity.
Below, you will find infographic snapshots of our Still Separate, Still Unequal research that explain how each of these factors tie together, forming a complex, and fundamentally racist educational structure in our region.
A focus on challenging these specific upstream systems is at the center of Forward Through Ferguson’s current and ongoing Education Equity work.
Our analysis of education inequity in the St. Louis region calls out the policies that have long-served to protect the status quo while inflicting generational damage onto communities of color. While the negative effects of these systems are pervasive, we also believe that these are the areas of focus through which we can most effectively initiate change.
1. Funding
The St. Louis region’s education funding landscape is highly uneven, and it’s not an accident. Majority-White districts spent over $2,000 more per student and received $1700 more in funding per student than Majority-Black districts. The largest funding gap between individual districts was about $14,000 more per student.
Click Here to Download the Funding Infographic
2. Property Taxes
Funding education through property taxes is inequitable. Majority-White district communities have almost twice the property wealth and household incomes than Majority-Black districts, who must tax themselves at a higher rate to try to make up the difference.
Click Here to Download the Property Taxes Infographic
3. Segregation
Federal, state, and local policies and practices led to de jure and then de facto segregation in our region and schools. Today, St. Louis area public schools are almost as segregated as 60 years ago before meaningful integration took place, with 78% of public school students attending a racially concentrated district.
Click Here to Download the Segregation Infographic
4. Education Environment & Quality
Racialized differences in funding contribute to differences in education environments. For example, teachers and administrators at majority-Black districts are paid on average about $6,000 and $15,000 less, respectively, than majority-White districts. For example, 1 in 4 Black students doesn’t have access to AP or calculus classes.
Click Here to Download the Education Environment Infographic
Visit StillUnequal.org to learn more about these upstream factors and FTF’s call to transform them.
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