Mississippi

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

What will it take to reform K-12 education in Mississippi?

By Matthew Lynch

Year after year, it breaks my heart to see the public education system in my home state of Mississippi repeatedly scoring so low in education rankings, particularly when it comes to students in a viscous cycle of underachievement. As an educator, it makes me disheartened to know that as a whole, public schools are not winning the battle against low-incomes and poverty and their negative impact on learning.

I do not doubt that there are exceptional schools in Mississippi. In fact, I have worked for several of them. However, this is the exception to the rule, rather than the norm. We all know what happens to students who leave high school without basic skills. More often than not, they fall prey to a cycle of generational poverty, underachievement and possibly incarceration.

My critiques are not meant to bash my home state and its K-12 educational system; my aim is to issue it a no holds barred wake up call. Collectively, our educational system cannot get any worse, so why deny charter schools the right to come in and mix things up a bit? Or to put dollars beyond aggressive social work programs that extend beyond academic constraints? I do not endorse making rash decisions, but I also do not condone sitting idly by and expecting for our system to magically get better.

So what can be done about this? There is obviously a problem that exists but observation alone will not get us very far. Then the question shifts to whether anyone even cares. Realistically, the parents of most Mississippi public school students cannot be relied upon to change this near-failing trend. Many of these parents were students in the same seats in their own K-12 generation so they do not know anything different. The children certainly cannot change the course of their educations. Even if they understood that the learning process around them needed to improve, they have no power to change it.

The responsibility then lies on the shoulders of educators – from the public school classroom teacher to the state superintendent of education, Dr. Carey Wright.

Increased equity

One way to improve the achievement of Mississippi public schools is to consolidate high and low-poverty districts to increase equity in school funding and reduce racial or socioeconomic segregation. I’d say that is a start – but simple consolidation will not solve the underlying problems. With low incomes and poverty come students with more baggage than their mid- to high-income peers and if those accompanying issues are not accounted for and addressed, the learning process will always be fruitless.

Life skills

Along with learning teaching methods, educators in Mississippi need to have social work training, of sorts, to accomplish their goals of reaching children academically and emotionally. Without public school programs that reach beyond the constraints of academics alone, Mississippi will continue to suffer low scores on annual education rankings. The bigger problem, of course, is that these numbers reflect public school student underachievement and that is an issue that impacts every citizen in my home state.

Urgency needed

The risks have never been greater: the future of Mississippi and its children is at stake. Mississippians cannot continue to allow the educational system to operate in its current condition. While there is no magic formula or configuration to solve the problems our schools face, we must engender change, and we must do it now!

On the surface, the concept of creating and sustaining school reform is an oxymoron, simply because change is inevitable. In many ways, what is needed is sustainable change. In other words, schools must change to meet the current needs of children and youth in order to support their development into contributing and productive adults.

As the needs of our society shift, our education system must adapt to ensure that it prepares an educated populous to meet society’s needs. Education reform is possible, but it depends on what the state is willing to do to achieve its educational goals. Will Mississippi develop and pass effective educational legislation aimed at creating viable solutions to the problems at hand?

Lasting and beneficial change in our schools will require hard work from a committed group of stakeholders — teachers, administrators, parents, policymakers, and community members alike. Ultimately, it is the children who matter most. At the end of the day, they are the reasons why we must champion the cause of education reform in Mississippi and throughout our great nation.

I hope to be writing a very different column in the near future about Mississippi’s public school ratings but that can only happen when better management of the poverty-classroom relationship takes place.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, HBCU's, list, Matthew Lynch, Mississippi

4 Interesting Facts about Education in Mississippi

Mississippi is my home state, and an interesting state at that. Some time ago I wrote an article about what MLK would say about education in Mississippi, and I wrote it because of some startling realities about education in this state. I brought up that 24% of people in the state are estimated to live below the poverty line, and that many of Mississippi’s poorest residents are children of color — many of them are black children. For this reason, among others, Mississippi may need special attention when it comes to addressing P-12 education.

Here are a few sobering facts about education in Mississippi.

  1. Public education in Mississippi is ranked last in the nation year after year. Public education in Mississippi ranked last, yet again, on Education Week’s Quality Counts report . The state received an “F” grade for academic achievement, and a “D” for the chance of success for students.

There is no easy fix for this. Even academic programs targeted for at-risk students can only go so far. With a poverty rate of 24 percent in the state, the problems that impact student success in classrooms extend far beyond it. To really see a difference in student outcomes, the state needs economic initiatives that boost the life quality of residents and give more opportunities to students once they are done with school. Recognizing that these outside factors go hand-in-hand with student outcomes in classrooms is the first step toward moving Mississippi out of last place and putting it on course to be a P-12 leader in the country…

  1. Mississippi is short on education funding—by $1.5 billion. Durant Public School teachers in Mississippi spend their evenings on the Internet, browsing for math and other problems to give their students because the school doesn’t have up-to-date textbooks.

School leaders say that new books aren’t in the budget, nor are reading coaches to help improve the districts academic rating of “D.” To save money, teachers and their assistants have already been reduced and administrators took pay cuts.

The troubles in Durant, located about 60 miles north of Jackson, illustrate a picture of the state as a whole. Mississippi legislators have ignored a state law and spend $1.5 billion less on education than what is required; the cuts in the state are the deepest in the country.

State funding was originally cut as tax revenues plunged during the recession. According to early estimates, the state could fall $280 million short again in 2016.

Durant has 588 students in grades K-12. The teacher turnover rate is high, and when new teachers are hired they tend to be recent graduates who are inexpensive to bring on board.

Sanders-Tate, the superintendent in Durant, dreams of raising the schools rating from a “D” to “A,” but knows it’s a challenge.

“When you don’t have what you need, you’ve got to make do,” Sanders-Tate said. “I’m tired of making do for the kids when they deserve the best like everyone else.”

  1. Mississippi has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, with 50 births for every 1,000 young women between 15 and 19 years old. Despite this, attempts to educate young people in the state about safe sex practices have been met with hostility.

Alarmed by the high rates of teen pregnancy, and high number (76 percent) of high school students who report being sexually active by age 17 in the state, members of the business community lobbied the state to make sexual education courses mandatory in public schools. Those lobbying won a partial victory — but actual implementation of the rule has been slowed down in the religious and conservative state.

The Los Angeles Times reports that mother Marie Barnard was pleased when Mississippi made sex education mandatory after many decades of disallowing it. She was less than pleased, however, when she found out one of the “lessons” involved students passing around an unwrapped piece of chocolate candy and observing how “dirty” it became with more contact. The message does not provide an educated view on sex, or show respect to young people who have been sexually active, she said.

The candy example is just one way the noble goal to educate Mississippi’s youth about responsible sexual activity has gone awry. Part of the enacted law requires parents to sign a permission slip allowing their children to take sex ed courses in the first place. There are also issues of enforcement and the exact curriculum being taught. Individual districts, for example, can choose to implement abstinence-only sex education classes.

So it seems the battle for a sexually-informed generation in Mississippi wages on, even in public school classrooms.

  1. Mississippi received a grade of “B” for its early childhood programs, compared to a national average of “D+.” There is a silver lining to every cloud. Despite being one of the worst-performing states in many categories of education, Mississippi ranks second nationally when it comes to Head Start enrollment (third nationally when it comes to Kindergarten enrollment and access to full-day Kindergarten programs). Getting kids signed up for early childhood programs is just the start of course. These children need to learn enough while in those classrooms, but getting them started as early as possible is definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to the future academic success of students in the state.

It is also one of the relatively few states in America that is pushing for mandatory Kindergarten. Representative Sonya Williams-Barnes, a Democrat from Gulfport, authored of “KIDS Act” that would change the mandatory school age for children in the state from 6 to 5 years old, in essence making Kindergarten mandatory for children in the state.

So how does Mississippi stack up against other states when it comes to the Kindergarten issue? There are only 15 states and the District of Columbia that require Kindergarten by law, and there are actually six states that do not even require public schools to offer Kindergarten. Despite the bad rap Mississippi often gets when it comes to student achievement numbers, the state does pretty well on Kindergarten access and has nationally high numbers for attendance. So adding in a Kindergarten requirement would not make a huge difference in the amount of kids who attended, but will just be more of a formality.

All this said, where Mississippi could really use the legislative boost is when it comes to pre-K education — an area where strides are being made. The Mississippi Department of Education reports that two-thirds of all the kids who entered Mississippi public Kindergarten in the fall of 2014 did not have the base-level skills required for adequate learning. In my opinion, the age of 5 is too old for mandatory education in the state, but it will probably be a few more decades before Mississippi, or any other state, requires it any younger. Hopefully this latest proposal will pass with no problems to show that state leaders are unified when it comes to early childhood education initiatives in Mississippi.

My home state of Mississippi needs to make some big changes as soon as possible. I want nothing more for the state to have sufficient money to put towards improving education, and to see the ratings improve drastically.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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