In order to fix a problem, you first need to accept you’ve got a problem. By Douglas Carswell

In order for families in our state to get the education their children deserve, we need state leaders to recognize that right now they aren’t getting a good enough education.

Instead, what we get is propaganda about the Mississippi education ‘miracle’. 

Sure enough, having marked their own homework, the Mississippi education bureaucracy told us that “student achievement has reached an all-time high” in math, English and science.

Just as you get inflation in the economy, you get grade inflation in the education system.  MAAP scores are used to help rate schools and districts A-F.  There has been a dramatic fall in the number of D and F rated districts in recent years.  This is not because those districts are no longer failing, but because even failing districts get given better grades.

A more credible measure of student performance is the national benchmark, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).  This data tells a less flattering story.

• 4 in 10 fourth graders would struggle to read this sentence.  In 2022, they could not reach even the basic reading standard.
• 82 percent of 8^th grade kids in Mississippi were not proficient math in 2022. 
• 69 percent of 4^th grade kids in Mississippi were not proficient in reading in 2022.

Education standards are bad – and they are not getting better!

The claim by the Mississippi Department of Education that Mississippi “students have made faster progress than nearly every other state” is ridiculous.

Officials know all this, yet still present a misleading picture of what has happened in the belief that you will be impressed.

Equally implausible is the idea that we should celebrate record high school graduation rates.

One in four Mississippi public school students is chronically absent from school.  Worse, the number of kids regularly not showing up to school has skyrocketed from 70,275 in 2016-17 to 108,310 in 2022-23.

Honesty about the true state of education matters because self-congratulatory propaganda is one reason things don’t get fixed.

Mississippi has been run by supposed conservatives for over a decade.  In all that time, we have seen remarkably little progress towards the kind of big strategic changes we need.

In 12 months, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana made more progress towards school choice than Mississippi managed in 12 years.  Why?

Mississippi is now surrounded on three sides by states that have universal school choice.  In every case, change took courage and vision, not self-congratulation.

One of the reasons why Arkansas’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and Texas’ Greg Abbott are regularly on Fox News and are emerging as conservative leaders with a national profile is because they have shown the tenacity to fight for school choice in their own states.

Our job at MCPP is to push forward conservative policies based on true conservative principles, not dubious press releases. 

We aim to ensure that conservative leaders in this state finally commit to universal school choice.  We are on a mission to ensure that anyone telling you that there has been an education ‘miracle’ looks ridiculous.  Only school choice will do.