Standing on the steps of the Capitol Building flanked by American and Mississippi state flags, Gov. Tate Reeves lauded Mississippi’s educational progress during his annual State of the State address on Jan 29.
“For so long, our teachers and our kids have been told they are last. 50th. At the bottom. Y’all, it’s just not true,” he said. “Mississippi is charging to the front of the pack with our education system and daring other states to keep up.”
Reeves focused heavily on the state’s academic achievement including “record-high graduation rates and record-low dropout rates.” On the same day, the Mississippi Department of Education cited new data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that Mississippi’s fourth-grade students ranked first in the nation for achieving the highest score increase in reading and math since 2013.
“Today, we actually received even more proof that what we have done is working,” Reeves said from the podium. “Mississippi’s brand-new data from one of the top testing institutions—the National Assessment for Educational Progress—shows that we broke educational achievement records again.”
Secondary Education Gains
The data also showed that Mississippi has made significant gains with its minority populations. Black fourth-grade students in Mississippi now rank third in the country among their peers for reading and math. Hispanic students in Mississippi rank first in the nation in reading and second in math among their peers. The state’s fourth graders rank No. 9 overall in the nation for reading and No. 16 for math.
“Congratulations to our fabulous teachers, school leaders, students, and parents for their remarkable achievements!” Parent’s Campaign Executive Director Nancy Loome said on January 29. “And kudos to our legislators who have invested in our public schools and resisted following other states off the school choice cliff. While Mississippi’s scores on national assessments have improved steadily over the years, the national average has declined following the national voucher push to divert critical resources to private schools.”
NAEP, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” is given every two years and measures student performance in 4th and 8th grade reading and math in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Mississippi was one of only 13 states with gains in fourth-grade math, with students who scored proficient or advanced in math increasing from 32% in 2022 to 38% in 2024.
“The 2024 results prove that the education reforms the state has been implementing over the past decade work. They also validate the historic gains Mississippi students first showed in 2019,” Mississippi State Superintendent of Education Dr. Lance Evans said in a Jan. 29 press release. “When we keep academic standards high, focus intensely on literacy, and ensure a strong accountability system for schools and districts, student achievement improves.”
The data is even more positive for the state when adjusted for student demographics (i.e., poverty). The Urban Institute announced that when these NAEP scores are compared with demographically similar students around the country, Mississippi ranks 1st for 4th-grade reading and math, 1st for 8th-grade math, and 4th for 8th-grade reading. The Urban Institute calculated how each student who takes the national test scores relative to students across the country who are the same gender, age, and race or ethnicity and have the same free and reduced-price lunch, special education status, and English-language-learner status.
The data does identify one weakness. Reading scores for eighth graders in Mississippi remained stagnant. Only 23% of students reached the proficient level by eighth grade, showing no significant change from the 2022 test.
State Officials Want More Educational Changes
Mississippi House Rep. John Faukner, D-Holly Springs, filed House Bill 857 to expand the current Literacy-Based Promotion Act to include interventions for students in fourth grade through eighth grade. It advanced out of the House Education Committee on Jan. 22, meaning it will get a vote on the full house floor.
Gov. Reeves said in his Jan. 29 address that he has proposed “revising the accountability system to place greater weight on proficiency and less on academic achievements” to ensure the state’s students are best prepared for adulthood.
“It is wrong that schools can be awarded with an ‘A’ or ‘B’ rating when more than 70 percent of their students aren’t proficient in reading,” Reeves said. “Let me say that again: there are schools in Mississippi who are hanging their hat on their rating when 70 percent of their students can’t read at an adequate level. That’s just flat-out wrong. And we must put a stop to it.”
The Mississippi Department of Education began revising the state’s accountability system last fall. MDE began moving to revamp the model after more than 65% of school districts in the state earned a B or higher on the state’s accountability rating for the 2023 school year. Mississippi law requires the standards to be raised “when student proficiency is at a seventy-five percent (75%) and/or when sixty-five percent (65%) of the schools and/or school districts are earning a grade of B or higher.”
The Mississippi Accountability Task Force discussed proposed revisions to the accountability model during its August and November meetings. Their draft timeline proposes new standards be set by the summer and communicated to local education agencies in the fall.
Mississippi Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said in the Democratic response to the Governor’s address that he attributed the state’s educational progress to non-partisan support of the state’s education system.
“Republicans led passage of the third-grade reading gate with overwhelming Democratic support,” he said in the Jan. 29 response. “Democrats and Republicans have pushed for more reading coaches to help students who had fallen behind and more career coaches. We passed a new funding formula that increases funding with greater equity. We have been working together.”
Blount said that Republican efforts to enact “school-choice” legislation will undo the state’s headway. State Democrats have argued that making it easier for students to transfer to other public schools outside their districts would have negative affects on everything from sports to property taxes. During his remarks, Blount also criticized the effort to give students public education funds through vouchers to attend private schools.
“There are around 50,000 students in private, church-related and home schools,” he said. “Let’s be conservative and say 10 percent of students currently in public schools choose to use a voucher to go private schools. That’s $630 million a year. Most of it is a new cost to you and the state budget.”
House Republican lawmakers advanced bills that could allow public school transfers and the use of public education funds for more private school vouchers along with other “school-choice” legislation on Feb. 4.
During his State of the State response, Blount also raised the issue of private school accountability.
“As Democrats, we believe that any school receiving state funds should be subject to the same academic accountability standards and oversight by the state auditor—just like public schools,” Blount said.
His response echoed comments Mississippi State Superintendent Lance Evans made at the Stennis Capitol Press Forum on Oct. 7.
“I do believe that if one single dollar of public money goes into a private school, that every single child in that school has to be subject to very same assessment pieces every single student in a Mississippi public school,” Evans said last October. “…We all have to be held for the very same measure. That’s the bottom line. We can’t provide funding (for private schools), but hold those people to a different level of expectation than our public school students. And it can’t be an assessment of their choosing. It has to be the very same assessment that any student in a Mississippi public school is subjected to.”
The Democratic response to Gov. Reeves’ address called for measures to make health insurance more affordable for educators.
“To be specific: If you are a teacher, married, with two children almost half (43%) of your take-home pay from your raise goes to higher insurance costs,” Blount wrote. “Ask Republicans what their plan is to keep pace with other states and help with insurance. We must keep supporting our teachers and fully fund our schools—and more tax cuts will make that impossible.”
Higher Education
The governor told those gathered at the State of State address on Jan. 29 that Mississippi’s colleges and universities must prepare students for prosperous careers.
“We should insist that our higher education institutions train Mississippians to earn,” Reeves said. “Far too many students are stuck in tracts that will not lead to fruitful careers. That may be fine for a few who want to go down academic rabbit holes, but the focus of our investment and our efforts should be preparing our kids to live well. We must focus on degrees that lead to lives of prosperity and stability.”
State Auditor Shad White made similar comments in September, arguing the state should invest less money toward students earning degrees in fields such as anthropology, sociology, African American studies, and women’s studies. His office released a report titled “Plugging the Brain Drain: Investing in College Majors That Actually Work,” which the auditor said supported the state spending more toward degrees in areas like business or engineering. White applauded Reeves’ comments on X.
Reeves said that in conversations with CEOs looking to invest in the state, he found that few inquired about whether the state had a “a workforce of gender-studies students prepared to take their high-paying jobs.”
“They are ready to pay Mississippi mechanics, engineers and technologists,” the governor said during his State of the State Address. “They are ready to take those trained in business and science and fill their family’s bank accounts. We need a return on investment for the hundreds of millions of dollars we put into our colleges and universities, and that return should appear in the wages of our workers.”
Reeves ended his address by applauding the state’s accomplishments in 2024.
“We are bold, creative, accomplished, and fearless,” he said. “These qualities created the greatest year in Mississippi’s history in 2024. And because we are Mississippians, in 2025, we will do it again.”
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