The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis is providing a new pathway to a high school diploma in St. Louis, partnering with Ancora High School to allow people complete a high school education online, free of charge.
Ancora High School is an online program designed to help people who did not obtain a diploma or GED through online, flexible coursework for grades 10 through 12. The Urban League is fully sponsoring tuition for any St. Louisans who are interested and says it can help an unlimited number.
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The Urban League’s Save our Sons and Sisters program—which offers career and workforce training—assists around 4,000 people locally, regional director Tydrell Stevens says. The partnership with Ancora will help those people and also expand the program’s reach even further, he says.
The degrees offered by Ancora can represent an important step to better-paying jobs. The Urban League currently enjoys partnerships with both Boeing and Ameren. It recently launched a boot camp to help people pass the entrance exam for a Boeing apprenticeship program run through St. Louis Community College, Stevens says, which helped propel a class of 12 into careers at the aerospace giant. “We prepped them on it, and then we began to have a 100 percent pass rate for individuals that went through our class and going to STLCC,” he says.
Stevens says another 14 people have been hired by Spire in the past year in careers that, with overtime, pay six figures. “When we look at those 14 people,” he says, “we’re talking about over $1 million of combined wages, just those 14 people. Those are life changes. Some never made over $19 an hour.”
But those high-earning career placements are often contingent on a high school diploma, which can be a hurdle for adults already busy with work and family. Census data shows that only 90.8 percent of St. Louis city residents have a high school degree or higher (that increases to 94.5 percent in St. Louis County).
“There’s a huge need for this,” Stevens says. “We have a lot of individuals that need their diplomas, and it hurts them when we look to place them in the type of job that they want, right? We have to give them the honest answer that this is really the bucket of jobs you have access to without the diploma. That’s where this partnership is really going to be a huge game changer for not just our program, but for our region.”
Two recent graduates of Ancora High School, both working professionals with children, told SLM about the positive, flexible experience working with the online platform for their diploma. The program worked around their busy schedules, they say.
Amaya Holt, a Georgia resident who currently works at Goodwill, says she was trying to go to technical school to pursue a career in the medical field when a problem with her high school credits prevented her from enrolling. From October of 2024 until this January, when she completed her coursework, Holt says she plugged away at classes, also taking care of a three-year-old son. Now, she wants to go to technical school and become a medical assistant, and eventually move on to further careers in the field, like an X-Ray technician.
“They’re very hands-on, so they helped me a lot,” she says. “Anytime I needed help, it wasn’t hard for me getting in contact with anybody. It wasn’t hard for them to find a solution. … I’m grateful for Ancora. I don’t think I’d be able to do it without anybody else.”
Yadira Arroyo, a mother of three living in New Mexico, also has good things to say about Ancora, saying it put her on the path for success in the medical field. She worked on her coursework mostly during the evening and night. Arroyo says she was put onto the program by her cousin, who also got her diploma there. She thanked one teacher at Ancora in particular, Katrina Griffith, for helping her along. “She was always behind me,” Arroyo says.
Now, Arroyo is also on her way to a medical assistant role, inspired by her grandmother, who worked administering vaccines in Mexico.
The Urban League is also partnering with Lindenwood University, offering 15 percent off an online college degree, along with opportunities for additional scholarships to people who complete the Ancora program through the charity.
“This partnership between us, Lindenwood, and Ancora gives us the ability to help our clients in a very unique way—economic mobility, education, and partnering up (with) historic institutions that are looking to advance people’s careers, is something that the Urban League thrives upon,” says Urban League president and CEO Michael McMillan. “There are so many different jobs [where] you at least need to have a high school diploma. So, that’s essential for us.”
Why It Matters: Education—and especially higher education or technical training—has long been seen as a key pathway to economic mobility and career advancement. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published last year showed that a doctoral or professional degree leads to three times the weekly earnings of someone with no high school diploma. Even some college can make a difference in earnings, even as the unemployment rate decreases with each step up the educational ladder.
What’s Next: The Ancora High School program is already available to access through the Urban League, and Stevens says it will launch to a wider audience on Feb. 17. People who complete that program will be eligible for 15 percent off an online degree at Lindenwood University, the Urban League says, with the opportunity for further scholarships.
Editor’s note: A previous version of the headline on this story referred incorrectly to what Ancora students can earn. They earn diplomas, not GEDs. We regret the error.
