St. Louis Eyes Nonprofit Takeover of Troubled Schools

St. Louis school Superintendent Kelvin Adams unveiled a proposal Thursday that could see the city turning over control of chronically low-performing public schools to nonprofit organizations, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Under the plan, any of the district’s 18 most underachieving schools that fail to meet specific performance targets in 2014-15 would become contract schools, run by outside groups that can hire staff and set curricula. Mr. Adams said operators could include charter-school organizations but also a range of other educational nonprofits.

A growing number of large urban districts are handing the reins of chronically failing schools to nonprofit groups. Preliminary evidence on how the strategy is working is “better than mixed,” said Michael Casserly, head of the Council of the Great City Schools, which is doing a major study of the practice. “There is some evidence to show it does work, but there are a significant number of instances where it doesn’t.”