Like most people, your links confuse people by combining St. Louis city with St. Louis county. However, St. Louis county is not part of St. Louis city. The statistics, such as this and the too often ballyhooed crime stats, are falsely skewed. It&#x27;s like taking the crime stats of the baddest part of your town alone to represent the crime (or education) of your city as a whole.<p>Here&#x27;s another example. The City of St. Louis has a population of under 300K. The County of St. Louis has a population of over one million! And that does NOT include St. Louis city. It&#x27;s both fair and unfair to not include St. Charles City in this (for reasons I won&#x27;t go into) which includes another 300K. So most stats you read about St. Louis  are based on 300K out of a total population of 1.6 million! And the city is the baddest part of town.<p>Not that I don&#x27;t agree that there is disparity but, as someone else pointed out, it&#x27;s by choice, not anything the government does. That&#x27;s another story, a truth, that no one on HN wants to believe and would downvote me into oblivion if I stated it.