Equity Indicators Baseline Report: St. Louis Aligns Equity Indicators with Ferguson Commission's Calls to Action
After the death of Michael Brown, Jr., on August 9, 2014, “Ferguson” became synonymous with racial strife and inequality in the United States. But St. Louis’ history includes generations of segregation and inequity, which provided the context for the events of Ferguson.
In November 2014, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon appointed an independent group of regional leaders — The Ferguson Commission — to conduct a “thorough, wide-ranging and unflinching study of the social and economic conditions that impede progress, equality and safety in the St. Louis region.”
The Commission’s charge was:
To examine the underlying causes of these conditions, including poverty, education, governance, and law enforcement;
To engage with local citizens, area organizations, national thought leaders, institutions, and experts to develop a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the concerns related to these conditions; and
To issue an unflinching report containing specific, practical policy recommendations for making the region a stronger, fairer place for everyone to live.
In September 2015, the Commission released its report, “Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity,” where it states, “the data suggests, time and again, that our institutions and existing systems are not equal, and that this has racial repercussions. Black people in the region feel those repercussions when it comes to law enforcement, the justice system, housing, health, education, and income.”
To address these inequities, the report laid out 189 Calls to Action, each focused on policy change. In its final act, the Commission created Forward Through Ferguson to carry on its work, to help the region turn those calls into action, and to catalyze St. Louis’ efforts toward racial equity.
In 2017 the City of St. Louis, in partnership with Forward Through Ferguson and United Way of Greater St. Louis, was chosen to be one of five U.S. cities to create an Equity Indicators tool under the guidance of the City University of New York’s Institute for State and Local Governance (CUNY ISLG), with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation.
The tool is built around the three themes identified by the Ferguson Commission: Youth at the Center, Opportunity to Thrive, and Justice for All. Within each theme are three topics, and within each topic are eight indicators, for a total of 72 indicators. These are the indicators that can be monitored each year to track St. Louis’ progress towards achieving racial equity across the topics and themes.
The St. Louis Equity Indicators use the methodology developed by CUNY ISLG, the originators of Equality Indicators, to score each indicator, topic, and theme. While this first year of data provides the baseline static scores, following years will produce change scores for each level of data based on the difference in scores from one year to the next. Scores range from 1 to 100, with lower numbers representing greater inequity.
The 2018 Equity Indicators score for the City of St. Louis is 45.57 out of 100. Of the three themes, Justice for All has the highest score (51.54), followed by Opportunity to Thrive (42.58), and Youth at the Center (42.29). The topics within the themes show more variance, with scores ranging from 61.13 in the Civic Engagement topic to 25.75 in the Child Well-being topic. At the indicator level, scores range from 1 (representing the greatest inequity) for the indicator Child Asthma, to a high of 100 (representing the greatest equity) for High School Graduation Rates and Driving Status Violation Conviction Rates.