The top reported proficiency rate is 13% in Math. The lowest is 12% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Hawthorn Leadership Schl Girls
Hawthorn Leadership Schl Girls is a Missouri school district that effectively no longer exists. The district’s sole campus, Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls, closed abruptly in August 2023, just before the start of the school year, because of declining enrollment and budget constraints. That closure left families who had been expecting to send their daughters there scrambling to find new placements. The district’s directory confirms two buildings – a middle school and a high school – but both are listed as closed.
The district served middle grades, and state testing data from the 2022-23 school year, the last full year before the closure, is available for grades six, seven, and eight. The results show that a small proportion of students scored at the proficient level in math and English language arts. In grade six math, roughly one in seven students met the proficiency bar. In grade seven math, about one in nine did. Grade eight math results were suppressed, meaning they could not be reported publicly, likely because the number of tested students was very small. In English language arts, grade six results were also suppressed. Grade seven saw about one in six students proficient. Grade eight showed about one in thirteen. Science results for grade eight were suppressed. Overall, the proficiency rates were low, and many results were withheld because of small group sizes. A parent reading these numbers would see a school where academic achievement was a clear challenge, though any interpretation must account for the tiny tested populations.
No enrollment totals, demographic breakdowns, or free-or-reduced-price lunch data appear in the records. The district’s student body was small, but exactly how small, and what the racial or economic makeup was, is not available from the information provided. Similarly, there is no data on special education or English learner populations, staffing, discipline, or course access. State testing participation rates in grade eight were reported at just over seven in ten students, which is below typical state targets and could affect the reliability of any comparisons.
The district briefly operated as a single-site, all-girls charter school in St. Louis. No locale brief or community context was attached to the data, so where in the St. Louis area the school sat, and what the surrounding neighborhood was like, cannot be described from the sources used here. The only fact we have about the community is the closure itself, as reported publicly by a local public radio station.
For a family or resident, the story of Hawthorn Leadership Schl Girls is straightforward: it was a small, single-school district that has shut down. The academic performance during its final year was weak, with very few students reaching state proficiency benchmarks. The school’s closure means that no district services are currently operating, and any interested parent would need to look at other nearby districts or charter options in the region. The data does not allow a judgment on whether the school could have improved or what its specific strengths were, because so many fields – demographics, programs, graduation rates, discipline records – are empty. What remains is a thin historical record of a district that, after a short life, is no longer enrolling students.
See more original research from School Decision →