- MDE pitched lawmakers on providing funding for more literacy and math coaches, another round of teacher pay raises, and methods to fight chronic absenteeism.
During a two-day hearing of the state Senate Education Committee last week, the Mississippi Department of Education outlined its needs to continue the gains the state has seen in recent years.
In prior years, the Magnolia State was ranked at or near the bottom of nearly every category in terms of education. For instance, in 2013, the state was ranked 49th in fourth grade reading proficiency, a ranking that rose to 9th nationally in 2024, State Superintendent Dr. Lance Evans reminded the committee.
“Just over a decade ago, we all know, Mississippi was at a crisis point in public education,” Evans said.
The state’s rankings in math during that time also increased, from 50th in 2013 to now being 16th.
The graduation rate saw gains as well. In 2013, the state’s graduation rate was at 75.5 percent. The most recent ranking is 89.2 percent, above the national average of 87 percent.
To reach those gains, Mississippi took advantage of federal law changes that turned control of the education system to states as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Dr. Christy Hovanetz, a senior policy fellow for ExcelinEd, said some states did well with that local control, while others did not.
“It sounds like a good thing, but not all states are good actors,” Hovanetz described.
Combined with the effects of school closures as part of the COVID-19 pandemic, many states, including Mississippi, saw dips in education achievement. But Mississippi’s drops were not as pronounced as other parts of the nation. Hovanetz attributed that to Mississippi’s implementation of methods to increase educational achievement.
“But Mississippi doubled down, rigorous proficiency requirements, maintained high expectation for four year graduation rates, and you can see while everyone else in the nation was stagnant or going down, Mississippi improved by at least a grade level, while every other state was flat,” Hovanetz explained.
Dr. Paula Vanderford, MDE’s Chief Accountability Officer, described how implementation of the College and Career Readiness standards played a role, such as by increasing the kindergarten standard from a student being able to count to 10 up to counting to 100.
“It’s just the idea if we challenge our teachers and equip our students they can achieve the higher standards, and they have,” Vanderford added.
Other effective changes included the implementation of the A-F school and district accountability system, a move so effective that neighboring states such as Louisiana replicated it.
Currently, MDE is in the process of resetting the accountability model because one of the requisites to do so has been reached, that being that 65 percent of schools or districts have scored a proficiency score of C or higher. The most recent scores show more than 80 percent of schools received a C ranking or higher. Yet, that is a decrease from the previous year’s rate of 85 percent of all schools rated at C or higher.
Schools are now being assessed under those revised standards, grades for which will be released in September of next year. By modifying the standards, Vanderford warned that the state will possibly see some dips in scores, but the goal is to continue the upward trend in educational gains.
Other methods that have proven impactful are the use of literacy and math coaches in schools that are struggling and implementation of high-quality educational materials.
“I will say that we are at approximately of all of our K-8 schools have adopted a high quality instructional material and it makes a difference to our students,” MDE Chief Academic Officer Wendy Clemons described.
The Legislature’s support of expansion of the state funded Pre-K program has also had a positive effect on education outcomes. Clemons described how prior to that legislation, only about 38 percent of the state’s children were enrolled in a pre-K program. By the 2023-24 school year, that rate rose to about 61 percent.
“The importance of those pieces of legislation cannot be undersold,” Clemons said. “It has literally changed education and the face of education for our students.”
To continue these trends, MDE personnel asked for more funding so more literacy and math coaches could be hired and increases in teacher pay could be provided.
When literacy coaches were first employed, MDE had 29 such coaches serving 50 schools. At one point that number was up to 80 coaches serving 182 schools, but it has since fallen to 65 coaches serving 103 schools.
MDE would like to get back to 80 literacy coaches through additional funding. Currently, MDE has 25 math coaches that support 80 schools, which was paid for by the $5 million set aside through the passage of HB 1613.
The issue is that when a math coach is hired, it essentially removes a math teacher from the classroom. Clemons said it is an issue because math teachers are hard to come by, especially in a state that is ranked at 46th out of 49 in terms of teacher pay. MDE hopes to be able to increase the number of math coaches to 50 or 60 in the next four years.
With chronic absenteeism playing a part in student success, MDE also asked the Legislature to increase the pay of school attendance officers to a minimum starting pay of $30,000.
Absenteeism is a major issue in Mississippi’s schools. Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student missing 10 percent or more of the school year, which equates to a student missing at least 18 days of classroom instruction. Of the more than 430,000 students attending Mississippi’s public schools, about 120,000, or 27.6 percent, are classified as chronically absent, Clemons described.
A suggestion to reduce that number is to shift from dropout prevention plans and instead implement action plans that focus on graduation success. Data shown to the Senate committee on Friday shows that chronic absenteeism is most prevalent in the high school years, with seniors (14,528) making up the majority. The trend of high schoolers being absent has been increasing since the 2018-19 school year, from 20 percent to 39 percent in the 2024-25 school year.
Some of the factors driving those numbers are exam exemptions, holidays, and district intersessions. Clemons said most absences occur during the month of May.
Some methods MDE suggests to fight chronic absenteeism is to enlist school attendance officers and other education staff to form relationships with students, which can act as a driving force that brings students to class. MDE would also like to create a policy that when a school or district has a chronic absenteeism rate of 10 percent or more of the student population, that school would need to create an action plan to address it.
Clemons went on to inform the committee that MDE wants to create a public facing website that allows staff, students and parents to track attendance on a daily basis to be more transparent.
“But just having a dashboard that is public facing that provides on-demand data, and not waiting until the end of the year,” Clemons said.
One of the biggest hurdles in recruiting teachers to Mississippi has been low pay. Vanderford described how respondents in the last teacher retention survey noted low pay as a key factor in recruitment barriers. Neighboring states, on average, pay $15,000 to $20,000 more annually for similar positions, despite legislative efforts in Mississippi that have raised teacher pay to historic levels in recent years.
Vanderford also said that there some areas of the state where the school board could be the thing holding the district back. MDE once had an auditing process to identify governance issues and prompt a district to take corrective action when they are found. That is no longer the case since funding for those auditors ceased in 2018.
When districts have governance issues, there are repercussions.
“When those governance issues begin to exist, in no time you’ll see those letter grades drop,” Vanderford said.
Jeremy Pittari
