Switching for Survival and Success? Black Students' Struggles, Shifting, and Solidarity Within the St. Louis Desegregation Plan

• In Event: Vice-Presidential Session: St. Louis at the Crossroads of Race, Empire, and Place in Urban Education Reform in the United States

Abstract

The St. Louis Voluntary Desegregation program, and its corollary, the Interdistrict Transfer Plan, has existed in some form since 1983. At its height, approximately 13,000 Black students from the city of St. Louis transferred into predominantly white and suburban school districts, representing the largest voluntary desegregation plan in the United States. County and school district leaders responsible for the plan have slowly reduced the number of Black transfer students, and a November 2016 agreement extended the plan for a five-year period to allow about 1,000 new students to enroll through the 2023-2024 school year. Emanating from qualitative interviews with 37 former Black students who participated in the plan between 1983-2018 (Waves 1-4), this paper captures participants’ experiences, agency, their struggles, and solidarity efforts to ensure their chances of surviving and succeeding in schooling contexts that drastically differed from their home and community environments. Given the impending ending of this plan at the end of the 2023-2024 school year, findings provide implications for research, educational policy and reform, and schooling practices that create and sustain culturally affirming and educationally enriched environments for Black students.

Authors

• Jerome E. Morris, University of Missouri - St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Zori A Paul, Marquette University
  Presenting Author