How much is the Mississippi Legislature willing to invest in your child’s education?
See how much MAEP funding your district will receive next year, how much it is underfunded, and how much it has been underfunded since 2008, the last time schools received the funding required by our state law. Funding for the teacher pay raise was sent to your school district in a separate allocation.
What if your child’s school was in one of our neighboring states? Or funded at the national average? Legislatures in other states – even the states that are most like ours – invest far more per student than what our Legislature has been willing to commit. Our neighboring states of Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee invest an average of $1,000 more per student than Mississippi. Read more here.
It’s time to elect a Legislature that is truly committed to our children’s education, ensuring an investment in our children’s public schools that will allow them a level playing field when competing with their peers in other states. We will have an opportunity to do just that in the coming months! Soon we will unveil our Blueprint 2019 initiative – a plan designed to help you identify and elect legislators and state leaders who will make a real commitment to our children and our public schools.
Many thanks to those who submitted comments to the State Board of Education about the proposed changes to the Mississippi Accountability System. You can see the comments that were submitted here. Unfortunately, the board voted to adopt all of the changes proposed by the MDE staff, most of which will go into effect immediately, affecting school ratings for the current school year. Many of the public comments spoke specifically to this unfair practice of “changing the rules after the game has been played.” MDE’s response to this concern is that no school district’s rating will be negatively affected by the rules changes being implemented immediately. However, some districts will gain from the changes while others will not.
We join many educators and parents in asking the board and MDE staff to put the brakes on accountability changes and give districts a long-promised year or two of consistency in expectations and accountability. Reliable performance targets and fair rules applied consistently are crucial first steps to rebuilding confidence in our state’s accountability model and trust in school and district ratings, something we believe is key to addressing Mississippi’s severe teacher shortage.
And thank you, as always, for standing in the gap for Mississippi children!
