St. Louis School Closures Trends Analysis

By Dorothy Rohde-Collins and J. Cameron Anglum, Ph.D.

This report covers the ever-changing public education system in St. Louis.

Key Points:

• Missouri teacher retention decreased significantly in the 2022-23 school year, while having been stable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Simultaneously, adoption of four-day school week calendars has boomed throughout the state.

• Four-day school week calendars are an increasingly popular policy intended to keep teachers in the classroom.

• We use statistical models to determine the effect of these calendar changes on teacher retention in adopting districts.

• We find that four-day school week calendars have, at best, had small and imprecisely estimated positive effects on teacher retention for some districts.

• These results highlight the uncertainty surrounding adopting a four-day school week calendar to better recruit and retain teachers, and highlight the need for additional study in this area.