The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 8%.
Original Research by School Decision on Froebel Elem.
Froebel Elementary is a regular public school in the city of St. Louis, serving students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. St. Louis is an independent city with a mix of residential neighborhoods and commercial districts, a diverse economy anchored by industries such as service, manufacturing, trade, transportation, and aviation, and major employers that include the Federal Reserve Bank, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and several large hospitals and universities. The city’s civic and cultural anchors include the Gateway Arch, Forest Park, the Saint Louis Zoo, and multiple major museums. Froebel sits on Nebraska Avenue in the southern part of the city, in a neighborhood that reflects the broader character of St. Louis: an older urban fabric with a mix of housing stock and modest recent price changes.
The school is small, with about one hundred fifty students enrolled. The student body is predominantly Black, with a small number of white, Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students. Virtually every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school in a high-poverty context. This level of economic disadvantage shapes the academic and support needs of the community. Because Froebel serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to evaluate, and the school does not offer secondary-level programs such as Advanced Placement or career pathways.
On the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP), the state’s standardized tests, the picture of academic performance is incomplete but revealing. For both mathematics and science at tested grades, results were suppressed because the number of students tested was very small, a situation that often occurs when small class sizes make individual results identifiable. In English language arts, results were reported for fourth and fifth graders. In fourth grade, roughly one in every twenty students scored at the proficient level or above; in fifth grade, about one in nine did. These figures place the school well below both state and county averages. When compared with other school districts across St. Louis city on an overall proficiency index that averages performance across tested subjects and grades, Froebel falls in the bottom quarter. A parent considering this school will want to look into what academic supports and interventions are available, especially in reading and math.
The housing market in the school’s ZIP code shows home values that are lower than the state median and have declined slightly in the past year, while rents are moderate and trending upward slightly. The cost of buying a home here is more affordable than in many parts of the region, but the local economic context includes a national unemployment rate that has been stable at a moderate level and a national median household income that has risen gradually. For families already in the neighborhood, or for those seeking an elementary school with a strong sense of community and a small scale, Froebel is a neighborhood public school option. The district, St. Louis City Schools, has not publicly reported any major new initiatives or structural changes in the recent period that would affect families at this campus.
What is clear from the available data is that Froebel serves a population with high economic need, and its state test results reflect significant academic challenges. The school’s size means that each child may receive more individualized attention than in a larger building, but the test scores suggest that additional support in literacy and math would be important to ask about. Because the school is an elementary-only site, there are no data on chronic absenteeism or discipline to round out the picture. For a parent trying to understand whether this school fits their child, the central facts are the high poverty rate, the low proficiency levels relative to the county, and the absence of enrichment programs or assessment data in some subjects due to small numbers. A visit and conversation with the principal about reading intervention, curriculum, and how the school supports students who are behind would be a sensible next step.
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