The Business of (De)segregation: KIPP and Saint Louis Public Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: School Districts and Choice Policies

Abstract

Citing low test scores, a dysfunctional elected school board, and massive debts, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education revoked St. Louis Public Schools’ accreditation in 2007, replacing the elected board with an appointed Special Administrative Board. One of the SAB’s primary strategies for improving public education in St. Louis has been to court national charter franchises. This paper examines a 2013 deal between SLPS and KIPP allowing SLPS’s use of KIPP’s student data in its own score reporting in exchange for KIPP’s free access to a vacant building owned by SLPS. It focuses on the charter movement’s strategy of accumulation by dispossession and its use of funds earmarked for public school desegregation in financing highly segregated, quasi-public charters.

Author

• Nicholas Eastman, Georgia State University