This caught me by surprise:
This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation’s Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage. …
But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVID and has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California’s on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil. [“Illiteracy is a policy choice,” Kelsey Piper, The Argument]
The report says … has seen [Mississippi] climb from 49th in the country on fourth grade reading to ninth nationally.
Mississippi ninth? Sounds like a miracle – in fact, some call it the Mississippi Miracle – but, like most big improvements, the lessons learned need to be distributed so all young Americans can benefit. Will they?
Our legislators who pursue this must keep in mind that a lot of professionals in the field will have an investment of some sort – generally prestige, along with NIH (Not Invented Here) and even financial – in other methods than that pursued by recently improving States. Add to that the determined demonization of the education labor unions by the right, such as the libertarians, and the political landscape may be dotted with mountain lions, which will discourage the career politician.
But this is why we hire politicians, to get the job done. I hope Americans can find such politicians.
