Overview

Metro Academic and Classical High School, established in 1972, is a selective magnet public high school in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, part of St. Louis Public Schools. It's one of only two International Baccalaureate World Schools in Missouri, offering the full IB Diploma Programme.

Academics

No independently verified Missouri state assessment data (via the Missouri School Report Card) was located for this profile; check the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's site directly for current school-level results.

Neighborhood

Central West End is a dense, mixed-use St. Louis neighborhood near Forest Park and several major hospitals (including Barnes-Jewish and Washington University Medical Center).

Crime & safety

Central West End-specific sources genuinely disagree, and not just on magnitude -- on the overall grade direction. One provider gives the neighborhood a D grade (16th safety percentile, less safe than 84% of neighborhoods it tracks), citing elevated violent and property crime relative to both Missouri and national averages. A separate provider gives the same neighborhood a B grade, describing it as having "average crime compared to other neighborhoods in the city." One source does note a citywide improvement: St. Louis crime down 10% year-over-year.

This is a direct grade-letter conflict for the same neighborhood -- D from one provider, B from another -- not just a difference in magnitude or percentile framing like most other conflicts in this directory. We can't reconcile these into one figure, so we're presenting the disagreement itself as the finding, rather than picking whichever grade sounds more authoritative.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score, and a direct D-vs-B disagreement on the same neighborhood is exactly the kind of case where showing a number would manufacture false precision. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "Metro Academic and Classical High School."
  2. CrimeGrade.org, Central West End overall, violent, and property crime analyses, 2025-2026.
  3. AreaVibes, Central West End crime data, citing FBI UCR data, 2026.
  4. DoorProfit.com, Central West End crime map and safety score, 2026.