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Mississippi: Parent Group Sues to Block Public Funds from Private Schools

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2024 //
7

In a court case in Mississippi, a parent group is seeking to prevent the state from disbursing public funds to private schools. The parents rely on a clause in the state constitution that explicitly bars public funding of private schools.

The story was reported by the Mississippi Free Press. SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM!

Schoolchildren could be heard playing less than a block away from the Mississippi Supreme Court building as attorneys argued over whether federal public funds should be awarded to the state’s private schools on Tuesday.

Rob McDuff, a Mississippi Center for Justice attorney representing the pro-public education nonprofit organization Parents For Public Schools, called a prohibition in the state’s constitution on funding for private schools “an ironclad principle” that “doesn’t have exceptions” during oral arguments.

Mississippi Supreme Court justices Leslie King, Robert Chamberlain and David Ishee also heard arguments from attorneys representing the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools and the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office defending the use of COVID-19 relief funds for private schools..

Parents for Public Schools filed the initial lawsuit in June 2022 after state lawmakers passed bills appropriating $10 million to help MAIS member schools pay for broadband, water and infrastructure projects. One bill Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law created the Independent Schools Infrastructure Grant Program. The other allocated American Rescue Plan funds for the program. The Legislature had set the grant to go into effect on July 1, 2022.

The pro-public education organization’s lawyers argued that awarding the funds to private schools violates Section 208 of the Mississippi Constitution and would give private schools a competitive advantage. That section of the Constitution says that “no religious or other sect or sects shall ever control any part of the school or other educational funds of this state; nor shall any funds be appropriated toward the support of any sectarian school, or to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”

“This is a case about a lot more than 10 million dollars,” Will Bardwell, an attorney from Democracy Forward, who also argued on behalf of Parents for Public Schools, told media after the Feb. 6 hearing. “This is a case about part of the Mississippi Constitution that reserves all of the state’s education funding for public schools. If we’re going to make exceptions to that for a 10 million dollar appropriation, then we can make exceptions about that for a 100 million dollar appropriation or a 500 million dollar appropriation. This is a simple case and it’s about a lot more than 10 million dollars.”

Please open the link to finish the story.

Categories Education Industry, Funding, Justice, Mississippi, Parent Groups, Privatization, Separation of church and state

Mississippi Rejects Federal $$ for Summer Food for Kids

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2024 //
14

Congress extended a federal food program for hungry children in December 2022. Mississippi and several other Republican-controlled states chose not to accept the offer.

The Mississippi Free Press reported:

Nearly 21 million children in the U.S. and its territories are expected to receive food benefits this summer through a newly permanent federal program, but Mississippi will not be among them after the State rejected the funds. It is not clear whether the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians will participate.

The United States Department of Agriculture announced the program on Wednesday.

Thirty-five states, all five U.S. territories and four tribes opted into the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program, or Summer EBT, which the government says is meant to supplement existing programs during the summer that have had a more limited reach….

Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming chose not to participate this summer.

Nebraska, Iowa and Oklahoma cited existing programs that already feed children during the summer as reasons not to join Summer EBT.

Implementing a Summer EBT program this year was “not feasible” in Texas, state Health and Human Services Commission spokesperson Thomas Vazquez said in a statement to the AP. He said that was due to USDA guidance coming in late December, “the level of effort needed” to start a new program and the need for the state legislature to approve money for it.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement that he doesn’t want “a single Oklahoma child to go hungry, and I’ll keep working to accomplish that, but large, duplicative federal programs don’t accomplish that goal.

“They cause more bureaucracy for families to wade through.”

I wonder if poor families are delighted that Governor Stitt saved them the trouble of doing paperwork to get free food for their children.

Categories Funding, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Poverty

Donna Ladd: How I Learned About Racism and Became a Journalist

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2023 //
10

Donna Ladd is the editor-in-chief of the Mississippi Free Press, which exemplifies the importance of brave, independent journalism. In this story, she relates her own journey from Mississippi to graduate school in New York City and back to Mississippi, where she leads a crucial news outlet whose staff and board is a model of racial integration. I am honored to be a member of the advisory board of the Mississippi Free Press.

She writes:

You may know that I grew up in Mississippi, but left the day after I got my political science degree from Mississippi State University, hightailing it north, vowing never to live in my racist, misogynistic state that tried to kill the spirit of smart young people like me ever again. I thought, naively, that I’d left all that ugly behind. The lessons about bigotry and sexism being a 50-state strategy were still ahead of me. Good Lord, there was so much I didn’t know.What I did know is that a bunch of political science profs believed in this child of an illiterate mother from Philadelphia, Miss.—Howard Ball, Ed Clynch, David Mason and Stephen Shaffer among them—and treated me like I was smart enough to learn what I didn’t know. My career path, I thought, was law school, even though I was always attracted to writing and truth-telling through journalism. Still, I didn’t exactly leave State with a lot of immediately marketable skills. I enrolled in George Washington University in Washington, D.C.—helped along by Dr. Ball’s reference; he compared me to an unsophisticated but promising Norma Rae—but the school and I didn’t match well. Truth be known, I wasn’t ready to succeed there.

So, I dropped out and became a club DJ. That ended up funding my teaching myself to be a writer and a journalist, first with dalliances with small newspapers in Colorado and New York City. I learned on the job.But it wasn’t until I was nearly 40 that I got more schooling—and remarkable for the daughter of Miss Katie, it was at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism where I honed my journalism skills and learned both what to do and what not to do as an editor and trainer. As any honest success story will tell you, I internalized that who you know and how they’ll help you get into a job to learn and grow inside is a major key to anybody’s success, regardless of your college major.We begin or 22nd year of Free Press Journalism in Mississippi on Sept. 22. Help us celebrate with a gift of $22, $222, $2,200 or $22,000 on #MFPGiving22Day!

Put simply: I didn’t need a fancy j-school degree to become a journalist, but it helped me improve my skills and meet people so that my work would be read—and, these days, funded. But it was other Columbia studies as part of my mid-career master’s, with more diverse instructors and thinkers than in the j-school then, that turned me into the writer, thinker, entrepreneur and mentor I am now—and taught me never to prop up false narratives wherever they spring from.Bottom line: I cared about racism deeply, and I came to understand that it was my job as a white journalist to expose the perils of “whiteness” (not the same as light-colored skin) to us all, that it was my work to do especially as a child of Neshoba County who knew some famous lynch mobsters. I already knew white folks all around me in Mississippi (and the whole U.S., so don’t get cocky) were either actively working to extend race inequity to keep the reins of power—I mean, nothing has ever been more obvious so stop the act, people—but also that my early censored Mississippi education kept me from understanding the connections and pathways out of this sick mess.My real grad-school education came after I crept shyly into the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and asked Dr. Manning Marable to allow me into his Black Intellectuals graduate seminar. And I read, listened, thought. A lot. I had no idea that I would soon return to Mississippi—but I know now that my studies with Dr. Marable and my white adviser Andie Tucker (a former PBS producer) urging me to come home to Mississippi and report about race, or “whiteness,” rewrote my future.Help grow Free Press journalism in Mississippi with your donation today.

Not to mention the future of others. I brought home everything I learned in that imperfect Ivy League institution among many people who loved to spit at the South without checking their own postage stamps. It was there that I first really understood just how bad de facto northern racism was, thanks to Dr. Marable. I first learned about so many Black American heroes who should, damn it, also be my heroes and all of yours. But they can’t be if I didn’t know they existed, or what motivated them, or the sheer bravery they mustered to face likely death for trying to make this country live up to its own constitutional and patriotic hype.Without the thinking and probing I did in my “soft” studies about humanity at Mississippi State and Columbia, Free Press journalism would not exist in Mississippi. I would not have influenced, trained, cheer-led, mentored, and recommended so many young Mississippians over the years, trying to help them believe that we can change the trajectory and inclusion of our state and, thus, the nation. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have so many white people of all ages walking up to me in the grocery store to tell me “I just didn’t know” about so many things they were lied to about in school and our textbooks.Not to mention, I wouldn’t be running the second and third publications I co-founded here, choosing truth and accuracy over blind partisanship, giving raises, recruiting, training teenagers in marketable skills and brainstorming with the most amazing team of journalists I would ever hope to share a newsroom with. And I wouldn’t be pinching myself because several of my profs from both my colleges donate to my newsrooms in Mississippi, even Sam Freedman, who challenged me the most. That’s full circle, baby.

Thank you, Mississippi State, Columbia, Andie, Sam and Dr. Marable (please rest in peace) for helping bring me to this place right now where I can sit on my porch and tell my Mississippians not to believe the political hype, to reject censorship, and to stop fearing education and the other. We sink or swim together, and heroes come in so, so many forms. Don’t deprive yourself.

Oh, and study whatever you need to to find your purpose and path. There is more to life, growth and prosperity than learning to code if that’s not your jam.

Donna Ladd, Editor and CEO

From the website of the Mississippi Free Press:

Founding Editor and CEO Donna Ladd is an award-winning journalist, editor and social entrepreneur from Philadelphia, Miss. After leaving the state the day after she graduated from Mississippi State, vowing to never live here again, she returned 18 years later with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia. She co-founded the impactful Jackson Free Press in 2002 in order to bring an in-depth news source to the state that would not shy away from historic effects of structural, institutional and systemic racism—how the past connects to the present—in a way no other media outlet had done in Mississippi.

Donna, the daughter of illiterate parents, has won many awards for columns, political columns, editorials, feature writing and investigative work, and has shared in a number of public-service journalism awards for her work in Mississippi, from helping put an old Klansman, James Ford Seale, in prison for the kidnapping and murder of two black teenagers in 1964, to deep systemic work on the causes and solutions of crime and violence now in the capital city and the embedded racism in the criminal-justice system since the time of slavery.

In 2001, Donna received a Packard Future of Children fellowship to study the discriminatory application of school discipline on children of color and the cradle-to-jail pipeline. More recently, she was a three-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation leadership fellow, deep diving into systemic inequity and pathways to “truth, racial healing and transformation” in her home state. The fellowship led to her efforts to change the narrative about race through the Mississippi Youth Media Project, which she started to train young people to challenge the media narrative about them and their communities. She has trained many award-winning journalists over the years.

She also had two fellowships to study racism in the criminal-justice system, through John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Penn Law School’s Quattrone Center, and two grants from the Solutions Journalism Network for the same work, which brought several of her dozens of journalism awards. In 2019, she had a Logan non-fiction fellowship at the Carey Institute for Global Good, where she did a five-week writing residency in upstate New York.

Ladd publishes long-form features in The Guardian related to racism, whiteness and criminal justice. She and her journalism have been covered in Glamour and Reason magazines, Next Tribe, CNN, NPR, CBC, CBS Radio, the BBC, al Jazeera, among other outlets. In 2017, Southern Living magazine named her as one of the “Innovators Changing the South.”

In 2011, Ladd was honored with a Fannie Lou Hamer Humanitarian Award, a Dress for Success Women of Strength Award in 2009 and the 2009 Angel Award from the Center for Violence Prevention for her work against domestic abuse. After surviving breast cancer, Ladd is the 2020 Survivor of the Year for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Jackson on April 25, 2020. She also was a 2020 alumni award winner from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 2020. In 2005, Ladd was named one of Mississippi’s 50 Leading Businesswomen by the Mississippi Business Journal, and she is the recipient of the 2006 Friendship Award, along with Mississippi (and now national) NAACP President Derrick Johnson, from Jackson 2000/Dialogue, a racial-reconciliation organization.

Categories Mississippi, Racism

Mississippi: Can a White Democrat Win the Governor’s Race?

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2023 //
2

Mississippi is as red a state as any in the country but a white Democrat has a real chance of winning. His name is Brandon Presley. He’s a second cousin of Elvis, and he grew up dirt poor. He’s a genuine progressive. He has gone out of his way to court Black voters. Presley has a chance of upending politics in the state and perhaps the region.

The Daily Yonder reports that Presley must overcome the rural-urban divide:

American politics are defined by the rural-urban divide. Democrats own the major cities; Republicans dominate smaller cities and the countryside. Brandon Presley aims to change that, at least in Mississippi. The 46-year-old Democrat is challenging the GOP incumbent, Tate Reeves, for the governorship. If he wins, he would be the Magnolia State’s first Democratic governor in a generation.

But a Presley victory is potentially something more. To win, the Democrat must score well with Mississippi’s rural voters. Such a turnabout would redound across the nation. William Browning, a Mississippi-based reporter, claims “If Brandon Presley beats Reeves, this changes the way people view elections.” In other words, a Presley victory could shake the nation out of its rural-urban divide. It would prove that Democrats can win rural America, and prompt Republicans to woo the cities.

Presley’s campaign is an uphill climb. Mississippi is the definition of a Republican stronghold. The GOP controls every statewide office and possesses supermajorities in both the state Senate and House. The race will be decided by rural voters, a Republican-leaning demographic. Sixty-five of Mississippi’s 82 counties are designated as rural (using the nonmetropolitan definition) and more than half of the state population, 54%, qualify as the same.

Despite these realities, Presley has more than a puncher’s chance at victory. Reeves is vulnerable. A January 2023 survey showed 57% of state voters wanted an option beyond Reeves. A June poll was even more ominous for the incumbent. One-fifth of Republicans supported Presley over the GOP incumbent. A Mississippi political observer explained these numbers bluntly, “Reeves is not likeable and is kind of arrogant.”

Presley’s prospects go beyond an unpopular incumbent. Every observer of any political stripe agrees that he is a one-of-a-kind political talent. Brannon Miller, a longtime state political hand, calls him Mississippi’s “best retail politician.” One reporter already termed him the “second best politician in state history.”

Tall, gregarious, and oozing Southern charm, he is, as one Democratic official described him, “a back-pattin’ doesn’t-know-a-stranger Democrat.” He is also equipped with a biography straight from a Hollywood script. Second cousins with Elvis, Presley was born dirt poor. Raised just down the road from Elvis’s Tupelo, he came of age in tiny Nettleton, Mississippi (population 1,995). At age 8, his alcoholic father was murdered. Thereafter, his single mom struggled to provide for him and his two siblings, Greta and Greg. The family regularly lived without electricity, running water, or a phone.

In 2001, the 23-year-old came home from college and was elected mayor of Nettleton. He has been running ever since. In 2007, voters elected him Public Service Commissioner for northern Mississippi, a post he has been reelected to three times by successively wider margins.

Presley is not a standard issue “national” Democrat. He steers clear of divisive social issues. Pro-life on abortion, he is an evangelical Christian who hews to Mississippi’s cultural mainstream. He is also a self-described “populist.” Born from his rough-and-tumble childhood, Presley also draws upon the rich tradition of Southern economic populism. Dana Burcham, the Nettleton city clerk, sums up Presley’s philosophy in saying, “He’s for the little people.”

Presley’s populism is apparent in his rhetoric. He defines his politics as one in which, “you side with the people against a system that is set up against the people all day long.” But his populism is also obvious in his record. As mayor and public service commissioner, he focused upon bread-and-butter issues for his rural and small-town constituents. Nettleton’s current mayor, Phillip Baulch, and Burcham credit Presley as the source of the town’s turnaround. Mayor Presley turned abandoned property into parks, audited the city’s books, balanced the budget, and cut taxes. The results are tangible. Storefronts abound with commerce. Downtown is tidy. Nettleton, if not thriving, is surviving.

Read on to finish the story.

The New York Times says changes in the laws of Mississippi may have a large effect on the outcome of the Mississippi race.

Just three years ago, Mississippi had an election law on its books from an 1890 constitutional convention that was designed to uphold “white supremacy” in the state. The law created a system for electing statewide officials that was similar to the Electoral College — and that drastically reduced the political power of Black voters.

Now Mississippi is holding its first election for governor since those laws fell, the contest is improbably competitive in this deep-red state, and Black voters are poised to play a critical role.

Voters overturned the Jim Crow-era law in 2020. This summer, a federal court threw out another law, also from 1890, that had permanently stripped voting rights from people convicted of a range of felonies.

Black leaders and civil rights groups in Mississippi see the Nov. 7 election as a chance for a more level playing field and an opportunity for Black voters to exercise their sway: Roughly 40 percent of voters are Black, a greater share than in any other state.

Presley is going after Black voters.

“This election is going to be one that is historical,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’d be the first time we don’t have to deal with this Jim Crow-era Electoral College when it comes to the gubernatorial race. And also, we’re at a point in our state where people are fed up and frustrated with what’s currently happening.”

Democrats are trying to harness that energy behind Brandon Presley, the party’s nominee for governor. Mr. Presley, who is white, is seeking to ride his brand of moderate politics and his pledges to expand Medicaid to an underdog victory over Gov. Tate Reeves, an unpopular Republican incumbent who has been trailed by a welfare scandal.

Black Mississippians lean heavily Democratic: Ninety-four percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, according to exit polls. Any path to victory for a Democrat relies on increasing Black turnout and winning over some crossover white voters.

Mr. Presley, a member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission and a second cousin of Elvis Presley, has made outreach to Black voters central to his campaign, seeking to win them over on Medicaid expansion, addressing a rural hospital shortage and providing funding for historically Black colleges.

On a recent October weekend, Mr. Presley navigated the tents and barbecue smokers at the homecoming tailgate for Alcorn State University, one of six historically Black colleges in the state. As he darted from tent to tent, wearing a purple-and-gold polo to support the home team, Mr. Presley introduced himself to unwitting voters and took selfies with his backers, many who flagged him down amid the din of music and aroma of smoking ribs.

Presley needs a strong turnout to win. I plan to send him a donation.

“This election is going to be one that is historical,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’d be the first time we don’t have to deal with this Jim Crow-era Electoral College when it comes to the gubernatorial race. And also, we’re at a point in our state where people are fed up and frustrated with what’s currently happening.”

Democrats are trying to harness that energy behind Brandon Presley, the party’s nominee for governor. Mr. Presley, who is white, is seeking to ride his brand of moderate politics and his pledges to expand Medicaid to an underdog victory over Gov. Tate Reeves, an unpopular Republican incumbent who has been trailed by a welfare scandal.

If Mississippi voters elect Presley, it would affect th southern

Categories Courage, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Hope, Mississippi, Poverty, Race, Racism

Did Justice Sotomayer Accept a “Bribe” to Speak in Mississippi?

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2023 //
22

This article was written by Margaret McMullan, an author and former professor of creative writing. She lives in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It appeared in the Washington Post. She recalls when she invited Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer to speak at the Mississippi Book Festival, no expenses paid. It was a long shot.

She wrote:

One rainy day in April 2019, my phone buzzed and the caller ID lit up with “Supreme Court.” I stared at the two words for a moment. Was I in trouble?

Then I remembered.

A few months earlier, I’d sent Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a letter inviting her to speak at the Mississippi Book Festival, which runs every August. Our offer was the same as it had been for other authors: a $250 stipend, a ride to and from the airport and a large, appreciative audience. In addition, we would purchase 1,500 copies of Sotomayor’s books to give to students. Could the justice please travel to Jackson, Miss., to talk to kids for two days? In the hottest time of the year?

Sotomayor’s “Turning Pages,” aimed at children ages 4 to 8, had come out in 2018. In her 2013 memoir suitable for young adults, “My Beloved World,” Sotomayor wrote about reading and the importance of education in her life, as well as her challenges with diabetes. I was sure that both books would resonate with Mississippi students. During our call, Le said the offer was interesting; the justice had never been to Mississippi. I outlined the potential impact Sotomayor would have on students, noting our state’s high poverty rate and its problem with childhood diabetes.

Le said she would get back to me.

And she did, with a few more questions — details about flight connections, book-signing and so on. I said we would be happy to upgrade her flight. Nope, the publisher was handling her flight. I said we’d be happy to upgrade her hotel room. Nope, the justice was fine with a Marriott, plus her security detail was familiar with the layout.
So far, so good.

Subsequent emails and phone conversations were similar. No, Le said, the justice did not need us to provide lunch or dinner. No, she could not accept the $250 stipend.

Did Le urge me to buy more books? No. She did ask whether we wanted any of the copies of “My Beloved World” to be in Spanish. In fact, we did, and I hadn’t thought to order them.

When Sotomayor came to Jackson, we had her speaking in the sanctuary at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church, the church where Eudora Welty once worshiped. Backstage, Sotomayor smiled when she saw my clipboard of questions. She helped me with my tote bag full of books. She then clapped her hands together and said something like, “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

In addition to our planned onstage interview, she said, she wanted the freedom to go off-script. “They’re children,” I recall her saying. “I want to be sure I get to their questions.”

“Perfect,” I said.

So the justice took a seat in one of the side pews and watched as Dav Pilkey, the author and illustrator of “Captain Underpants,” entertained a delighted audience of about a thousand students, drawing cartoons as he spoke. Then, it was our turn on the stage. I asked my clipboard questions and Sotomayor answered. Afterward, she got up and spoke from the heart, walking up and down the aisles.

In answer to the students’ questions, she told them about growing up in Puerto Rico, eating mangoes off the tree, going away to college for the first time and working in a male-dominated court system.
She talked to these kids. She asked them their names, what they liked in school, what they wanted to do with their lives. She hugged them and posed for pictures with them. After she finished, she signed their books and took more pictures.

“My success came about because I read,” she told them.

The following morning, we did it all over again for another packed sanctuary, with Sotomayor telling even more personal stories about her life and talking about a civics program she and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch work on. She also gave us homework: Go out and make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you.

My only regret is that we ran out of books. I wish we had ordered more.

There very well might be a culture of poor ethical conduct in the Supreme Court, but there is no moral equivalency between justices accepting rides on private jets to vacation with friends who had cases before the court and Sotomayor talking about her books and her life to a crowd of mesmerized young readers.

The standard royalty rate for authors is less than 10 percent of the sales price. I don’t know anything about Sotomayor’s deal with her publishers, but 10 percent would make her cut of the 1,500 books our foundation purchased approximately $2,250 — for which she had to fly to Mississippi and give two presentations. During the hottest month of the year.

Was that a bribe? You be the judge.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Literacy, Mississippi

Jesse Hagopian: Visiting My Enslaved Ancestors’ Grave

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2023 //
12

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher-author-activist in Seattle, wrote this moving article in The Nation. He, his brother, and his father traveled to Morgantown, Mississippi, to visit the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved. The trip was delayed by the pandemic and illness. But when they arrived at last, they had an unforgettable experience.

Knowing that their trip occurred at the same time that many states were banning the teaching of the truth about slavery made them even more motivated to learn the truth and teach it.

Categories Education Reform, Mississippi, Racism

Tom Ultican: Mississippi Malarkey

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2023 //
15

Tom Ultican, retired high school teacher of advanced math and physics, investigates the claims of Nicholas Kristof about a “Mississippi miracle.” In his article in the New York Times, Kristof attributed a rise in Mississippi’s test scores to “the science of reading” plus a policy of holding back third graders who don’t pass a reading test, allegedly proving that spending more money is not necessary, poverty doesn’t matter, and reducing class size is unnecessary.

He begins:

Nicholas Kristof’s opinion piece in the New York Times might not have been blatant lying but it was close. His depiction of the amazing education renaissance in Mississippi as a model for the nation is laughable. Lauding their third grade reading retention policies as enlightened, he claims their secret sauce for success is implementing the science of reading (SoR). This is based on a willful misreading of data while tightly embracing Jeb Bush’s futile education reform ideology.

Ultican then produces a graph showing that Mississippi fourth-graders ranked 20th in the nation in 2022, but its eighth graders ranked 45th.

Misusing data allows Kristof to end the paragraph indicating poverty is not an excuse for education failure. It reminds me of a statement written by education professor Kathryn Strom,

“The “no excuses” rhetoric (i.e, “poverty is not an excuse for failure”) is one that is dearly beloved by the corporate education reformers because it allows them to perpetuate (what many recognize to be) the American myth of meritocracy and continue the privatization movement under the guise of “improving schools” while avoiding addressing deeply entrenched inequities that exist in our society and are perpetuated by school structures.” (Emphasis added)

To add heft to his argument that poverty is no excuse, Kristof quotes Harvard economist David Deming from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education, saying “Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting.” He adds, “You cannot use poverty as an excuse.”

It is important to note that Harvard is famous for supporting privatization of public education and promoting failed scholarship. Deming is currently doing research with Raj Chetty and John Friedman. Along with Jonah Rockoff, Chetty and Friedman published the now thoroughly debunked value added measures (VAM) paper. Their faulty research caused many teachers to lose jobs before it was exposed as a fraud. Kristof is using an economist (not an educator) from a group best known for scholastic failure as his expert.

Kristof also indicates that spending is not important. He writes, “Mississippi has achieved its gains despite ranking 46th in spending per pupil in grades K-12.” If we look up at the 8th grade rankings, it seems they are getting what they paid for.

Ultican then goes on to describe the connections between the “Mississippi miracle” and TFA and Jeb Bush and a host of other corporate reform groups.

He concludes:

In this opinion piece, Nicholas Kristof touched on and promoted almost every billionaire inspired agenda item aimed at decreasing money going to public education. He acted as a representative of elites, advancing policies undermining education quality for common people.

This was not about improvement. It was about lowering taxes.

Please open the link and read this interesting article.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Fake News, Funding, Ignorance, Literacy, Mississippi

Nancy Bailey: Third Grade Retention Is a Terrible Idea

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2023 //
19

Yesterday I reviewed Nicholas Kristof’s enthusiastic endorsement of Mississippi’s reading program, which has raised test scores in fourth grade without reducing class size, spending more on education, or reducing child poverty. Kristof seems to believe that the so-called “science of reading,” allied with third grade retention and pre-school is the no-cost silver bullet to change American education. It should certainly appeal to those who don’t want to raise taxes or reduce economic inequality. The one study cited by Kristof in support of third grade retention was funded by Jeb Bush’s foundation; Florida enacted third grade retention and saw its fourth grade scores rise (but not scores in eighth grade).

Kristoff quoted a study that reached favorable conclusions about the efficacy of third-grade retention. He said that 9% of third-graders in Mississippi had been held back. I said that might be sufficient to explain the impressive fourth grade scores on NAEP: eliminate the lowest-scoring kids and scores go up.

Nancy Bailey, retired teacher, summarizes some of the research on third-grade retention: it’s bad.

She writes:

How can anyone who claims the Science of Reading is real think it’s OK to retain a third-grade child based on one test or for any reason?

If ever evidence or science existed involving education, understanding the rottenness of retention would be it. Yet some of the same people who believe using phonics (and more) is the one-size-fits-all scientific reading miracle seem fine with retention.

This is a crack in the glass for SoR science because it makes it look political. Retaining third graders because of a test may drive parents to leave public schools.

Children are devastated by retention. Once a child is retained, it changes their world. In Student Ratings of Stressful Experiences at Home and School, Anderson, Jimerson, and Whipple (2008) found that it rated high with various stressors.

Across grade levels, those events rated as most stressful by children were: losing a parent, academic retention, going blind, getting caught in theft, wetting in class, a poor report card, having an operation, parental fighting, and being sent to the principal.

When a child is kept back, they are more likely to be more physically developed in middle school than their peers. This certainly causes a child to rethink school and want to drop out.

In 2001, that’s right, 2001, Shane R. Jimerson’s Meta-analysis of Grade Retention Research: Implications for Practice in the 21st Century summarized studies of a previously published literature review about retention between 1990 and 1999, comparing this research with studies about retention done in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jimerson concludes:

In isolation, neither social promotion nor grade retention will solve our nation’s educational ills nor facilitate the academic success of children. Instead attention must be directed toward alternative remedial strategies. Researchers, educators, administrators, and legislators should commit to implement and investigate specific remedial intervention strategies designed to facilitate socioemotional adjustment and educational achievement of our nation’s youth.

Some SoR enthusiasts say if children had been given evidence-based instruction with phonics, no child would need to be retained. But even if this were true, why would they be on board for retention today when science is more confident of the problems with retention, especially third-grade retention based on one test, than the SoR?

It’s hard to believe Floridians ever permitted retention, since its researchers identified its harmfulness years ago. Many students have been retained in third grade throughout the years.

It’s perplexing to see legislators in other states endorsing it, like it’s a good thing, when the research about it is clear. It’s good that Michigan will no longer do it, but many other states continue to practice grade retention.

Furman professor Paul Thomas, who has written extensively about the SoR, describes retention here and presents a map showing the states currently subscribing to holding third graders back.

The same promoters of the SoR seem to love retention and are trying to connect it to Mississippi, where they appear to have higher test results in fourth grade.

The promoters of third-grade retention seem connected to former Governor Jeb Bush, who, for some strange reason, hitched his education star to third-grade retention based on a test. How sad that he didn’t promote lowering class sizes in K-3rd grade instead.

Categories Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Florida, Literacy, Mississippi, NAEP

Nicholas Kristof Does Not Know How to Fix Education

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2023 //
136

Nicholas Kristof is a columnist who is terrific on many issues but consistently wrong when he writes about education. As far back as 2009, I criticized Kristoff for a column in which he called American education “our greatest national shame,” citing Eric Hanushek’s since-discredited work on teachers (the best get students to produce high test scores, bad teachers don’t). Peter Greene took Kristoff to task in 2015 for being an educational tourist, making quick visits and issuing pronouncements that are wrong. I also chastised him in 2017 for endorsing for-profit schools in Africa.

Now, he has outdone all of his previous gaffes. He has discovered the amazing, miraculous, astonishing transformation of Mississippi.

Based on the impressive rise of 4th grade reading scores on NAEP, Kristof proclaims that Mississippi has lessons for the nation.

With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has shown that it is possible to raise standards even in a state ranked dead last in the country in child poverty and hunger and second highest in teen births.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of nationwide tests better known as NAEP, Mississippi has moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics. Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math.

Its success wasn’t because of smaller classes. That would cost money.

It wasn’t because of increased funding.

It wasn’t because Mississippi reduced child poverty.

It wasn’t because of desegregation.

It was because Mississippi embraced the “science of reading,” strict discipline, relentlessly focusing on test scores, and using behavioral methods that sound akin to a “no excuses” charter school.

In 2000, Mississippi received a gift of $100 million from a Mississippi-born tech entrepreneur to launch a statewide reading initiative. In 2013, the legislature invested in full-day pre-K, where children got a start on letters, numbers, and sounds.

The 2013 legislation also enacted third-grade retention. Any child who didn’t pass the third-grade reading test was retained. Most researchers think retention is a terrible, humiliating policy. But Kristof assures readers that failing students get a second chance to pass. 9% of students in third grade flunked. He considers this policy to be a great success, inspiring third graders to try harder, citing a study funded by Jeb Bush’s foundation (Florida also practices third grade retention, which lifts its fourth grade reading scores on NAEP).

Kristof writes:

“Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting,” David Deming, a Harvard economist and education expert, told me. What’s so significant, he said, is that while Mississippi hasn’t overcome poverty or racism, it still manages to get kids to read and excel.

“You cannot use poverty as an excuse. That’s the most important lesson,” Deming added. “It’s so important, I want to shout it from the mountaintop.” What Mississippi teaches, he said, is that “we shouldn’t be giving up on children.”

The lessons: it’s okay to forget about poverty; forget about segregation; forget about funding. Rely on “the science of reading” and third-grade retention. It’s cheap to follow Mississippi’s lead, which Kristof considers an advantage.

But!

Kristof minimizes Mississippi’s eighth-grade scores on NAEP. He writes: “One challenge is that while Mississippi has made enormous gains in early grades, the improvement has been more modest in eighth-grade NAEP scores.”

That’s an understatement.

Eighth grade reading scores in Mississippi have gone up over the past two decades, but scores went up everywhere. In the latest national assessment (NAEP), 37 states had scores higher than those of Mississippi on the NAEP eighth grade reading test. Only one state (New Mexico) was lower. The other 13 were tied. In Mississippi, 25% of the state’s students in 2019 (pre-pandemic) were at or above proficient, compared to 20% in 2003. Nationally, in 2019, 29% of students were at or above proficient*.

In 2019, 42 states and jurisdictions outperformed Mississippi in percentage of students at or above proficient in eighth grade math, eight were tied, and only two scored below Mississippi. 24% were at or above proficient in 2019, a big increase over 2009 when it was 15%. But Mississippi still lags the national average, because scores were rising in other states.

Has Mississippi made progress in the past decade? Yes. Is it a model for the nation? No. When impressive fourth grade scores are followed by not-so-impressive scores in eighth grade, it suggests that the fourth grade scores were anti Oakley boosted by holding back the 9% who were the least successful readers. A neat trick but not an upfront way to measure progress.

It seems fairly obvious that the big gains in NAEP in fourth grade were fueled by the policy of holding back third graders. Jeb Bush boasted of the “Florida Miracle,” which was based on the same strategy: juice up fourth grade scores by holding back the lowest performing third graders.

In 2019, fourth graders in Florida scored 7th in reading and 5th in math on NAEP, by scale scores. However, Florida’s eighth grade scores, like those of Mississippi, are middling, compared to other states. Florida eighth graders ranked #35 in eighth grade math. In eighth grade reading, 21 states and jurisdictions ranked higher than Florida, 21 are not significantly different, and 10 were below Florida.

Florida’s eighth grade reading scores have been flat since 2009; so have its its eighth grade math scores. Florida is a state that has gamed the system. Mississippi is following its lead.

Mississippi has made progress, to be sure. But it is not a national model. Not yet.

What’s worrisome about this article is that Kristof asserts that poverty doesn’t matter (it does); funding doesn’t matter (it does); class size doesn’t matter (it does). In his account, states that want to improve test scores can do it without raising teachers’ salaries, without upgrading buildings, without spending a nickel to improve the conditions of the schools or the well-being of children. Children who are hungry, lack medical care, and are homeless or ill-housed are not likely to learn as well as those who have advantages.

Does this explain why so many rightwingers love “the science of reading”? Publishers are rolling out new programs. Education can be reformed in the cheap. Can’t expect taxpayers to foot the bill, can you?

Kristof’s fundamental error is his determination to find miracles, silver bullets, solutions that fix everything. He did it again.

The U.S. Department of Education appends this disclaimer to every NAEP publication.

*NAEP achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, andNAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). NAEP achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution. Find out more about the NAEP reading achievement levels.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Fake, Florida, Literacy, Mississippi, NAEP

Mississippi: Transgender Girl Missed Her Graduation Ceremony Rather Than Be Humiliated

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2023 //
46

After a federal judge told a transgender girl that she had to dress as a boy for her graduation ceremony, the senior skipped the event.

L.B., as she was known in court, had been dressing as a girl for the four years of high school. The school told her she would not be allowed to participate unless she dressed as a boy. The ACLU of Mississippi went to court on her behalf. Her request was rejected by the judge, a Trump appointee.

Categories Bigotry, Freedom, Gender, Mississippi
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