Last week Fox News highlighted the “Mississippi Miracle” proclaiming the state’s educational surge wasn’t magic but “the result of deliberate, state-led innovation that transformed early literacy from the ground up.”
“Governor Phil Bryant didn't just sign the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013, he championed it,” reported Fox. “He rallied the legislature to pass this transformative policy with bipartisan support. His vision set the tone of no more excuses, no more social promotions, no settling for mediocrity.”
So why does House Speaker Jason White seem to want to cancel our momentum?
“We’re going to get rid of our testing through eighth grade,” White told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal editorial board a week ago. “In other words you’re going to test third grade for reading literacy, but other than that, we’re going to get rid of all testing.”
Understand that testing constitutes an essential element of the system used to engender Mississippi’s extraordinary education gains. Students get assessed three times a year in kindergarten, first, second and third grades, ensuring that common data sets are utilized by teachers to formulate instructional decisions.
Additionally, Mississippi’s national prominence resulted from rapid improvements in reading scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress (from 50th to 9th). This is a fourth grade test, one that, presumably, White wants to eliminate. We have also shown progress on math and other NAEP tests for fourth and eighth graders.
As White mounted his retrogression campaign, the Senate Education Committee showed interest in a state Department of Education (DOE) plan to build on the literacy act’s successes by expanding the test-based process to grades through the eighth grade.
“We have no intention of losing momentum,” State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans told senators.
White also wants to “blow up” the school accountability model, replacing it with one high school test, such as the ACT. “If you’re at a certain number, that’s the end of it, he said. “I don’t need to know anything else.”
Oh boy. School accountability, making sure our children were learning, progressing, and graduating used to be at the top of the conservative agenda for education.
Meanwhile, the DOE is implementing changes to the accountability model to include more college and career standards, the latter being a key emphasis by Gov. Tate Reeves.
White couches his ideas in the context of giving parents more say in their children’s education than government. This popular rhetoric, however, ignores that hard fact that state government, led by Gov. Bryant and the legislature, adopted the transformative Literacy-Based Promotion Act and forced its implementation statewide.
Hopefully, the state Senate can keep White from cancelling our educational progress.
“Don’t let anyone fool you by using senseless arguments” – Colossians 2:8.
Bill Crawford is the author of A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.
