Op-Ed: Mississippi Celebrates Major Educational Victory

This article originally appeared in Real Clear Education on June 26, 2023

It’s rare to see a comeback story as strong as that of Mississippi students.

According to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Mississippi fourth-graders, when adjusted for demographics, are ranked as the nation’s top performers in reading and second in math. Mississippi’s dead-last ranking in the United States in overall education was once a familiar statistic, but recent test scores reveal the incredible new reality of academic prosperity for students in the state. Graduation rates have skyrocketed to about 10% higher than the national average. Most students, including those in poverty, have moved from being ranked at the bottom to placing somewhere near the middle.

Victories of this caliber do not happen by accident or overnight. They are the result of hard work, dedication, and years of legislative battles and implementation

Read full op-ed in Real Clear Education.