For decades, America has been told that the key to better schools is more money. Underperformance, the argument runs, is really a question of resources. Just give the teacher unions what they ask for, and good outcomes will follow. Mississippi is starting to show that this simply is not true.
Over the past decade, Mississippi has made such progress in fourth grade reading that people have taken to calling it the “Mississippi miracle.” Mississippi ranked 9th in the country for fourth grade reading in 2024, up from 49th in 2013 — a forty-place climb in a decade, from near the bottom of the table into the top ten. Mississippi’s fourth graders now read better than their peers in New York, Minnesota and California — every one of them a state that spends a great deal more per child than we do. And here is the part the spend-more crowd would rather you did not dwell on. We get those better results on far less money. Mississippi spends around $12,300 per pupil, one of the five lowest figures in America. New York spends $31,918 — more than two and a half times as much — and its children read less well for it. New York, in other words, buys more than two dollars of schooling for every one of ours, and ends up further behind. Perhaps the starkest comparison of all is with California. A Black fourth grader in Mississippi is now somewhere between two and a half and three times more likely to read at grade level than a Black fourth grader in California — 19 percent reach proficiency here, against just 7 percent there — and California spends well over half as much again per pupil as we do. If money were the answer, those numbers would be the other way round. There is no reliable relationship between what a school spends and what its children actually learn. Mississippi proves this point not only when you compare our results to other states, but when you examine what is happening inside Mississippi in granular detail.
Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we built a free online tool — CompareMySchool.com — that lets any parent in the state see exactly how their school is doing. Type in a school’s name and up comes its grade, the share of children reading and doing math at grade level, and how it ranks against every other school in Mississippi — and against the rest of America, too. We intended it to be a tool for families to use this summer, as they contemplate the start of the next school year and perhaps begin to wonder if their kids are in the right school. CompareMySchool.com pulls all of the data into one place, in user friendly format. But once we built the site, something unexpected leapt out. The tool lets you line up every school district in Mississippi and set what it spends per pupil against how its children actually perform. If the conventional wisdom were right, you would expect a clear pattern: the more a district spends, the better it does. There is indeed a correlation between spending and outcomes, but it is the opposite kind of correlation. The higher the per pupil spending the worse the grades.
Higher spending, worse results
Across Mississippi’s districts, higher per-pupil spending goes hand in hand with worse outcomes, not better ones. The lowest-spending quarter of districts gets, on average, 63 percent of children to proficiency in reading and math. The highest-spending quarter manages just 36 percent. Read that again. The districts spending the most are getting barely half the results of the districts spending the least.
Ocean Springs, down on the Gulf Coast, is the top-performing district in the state - more than three-quarters of its students at proficiency - on about $10,300 per pupil. Jackson Public Schools spends $16,640 per pupil, more than 60 percent more than Ocean Springs, and gets fewer than a third of its children to proficiency. Petal spends roughly 42 percent less per pupil than Jackson — and more than doubles Jackson’s results. DeSoto County, the largest district in the state, educates nearly 34,000 children on the lowest per-pupil budget in Mississippi — and still beats Jackson almost two to one.
Our webtool also allows families to compare what their public school district spends against what the local private school down the road charges to do the very same thing — and the gap is startling.
Jackson Public Schools spends $16,640 of public money on each child. A few minutes away, there are private schools that charge about a third that amount. It’s the same story across the state where typical private school charges about $7,000 a year, while often getting far better results. The public sector, it turns out, is not the cheap option.
What matters is not how much a district spends, but how it spends it. This data in Mississippi strongly suggests that what we need to see are reforms that allow families dissatisfied with what their school board has to offer with the option of taking their child’s share of funding to a school outside government control.
Mississippi’s own data — now in the hands of every parent at CompareMySchool.com — makes the argument that money is not the answer. Better-run schools are, and the surest way to get more of them is to trust parents to choose.
Douglas Carswell is the President of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy and author of this post. CompareMySchool.com is accessible to everyone online.
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32 comments:
Once again, MCPP proves that they are totally useless, irrelevant and without purpose.
If correct, that statistic begs the question how much of that expense per student is actually going to the students?
They break down performance by the race of the student? Do they tie that to the race of the instructors that prepared them for this test?
I just hired some “Scholars” and they couldn’t read a damn measuring tape. But they can tap around on a smart phone. We lost our way. We were told over 40 years ago that you needed to get a college degree but what they failed at is there was no training for the crafts and trades. You ought to see what’s on the market these days and it’s only getting worse.
America spends more money per a pupil on education than any country in the world yet we don’t have the best schools.
You can sue a doctor, pharmacist,accountant and other professions for malpractice except schools. Why can schools be held accountable for education malpractice
Public education is a problem without a foreseeable solution. One can argue about proposed solutions but the failure of public schools is indisputable.
RMQ
So said anonymous from the cheapest seats.
We are allowing it to get worse. As a parent, I ensured my children were in the best possible position education wise. Now, they are both doing really well with jobs. Trades are a good way to make a living and can provide a good income. Having a degree is only a small part of the equation in professional development. You have to be playing chess in life and making moves that benefit you in the long run. A lot of people today are playing checkers for the short term instead of thinking years ahead.
St. Andrews is $23,000 per year. Jackson Prep, Jackson Academy, Madison-Ridgeland ain't far behind at $17,000 plus. There are just one or two other privates worth a damn in our state.
School performance is mostly a result of the quality of students that attend that particular school. The genetics of their parents, the stability of their home, the role models they look to, the interest their guardians take in their education. The most obvious thing ever and not spending levels. I once heard an educated, wise radio show host espousing that Jackson Prep administrators could sure teach JPS administration a thing or two about producing scholars. And I thought….idiot. Swap the student bodies and at the end of one school year, the opposite would appear true.
The MCPP nor general Media has no contact with anyone who has worked on the inside of the DOE willing to speak the truth to them, because it would cost them their job. Thus, they have no credible information that is actually true. The "Mississippi Miricle" is a public relations propaganda campaign that organicially materialized during/after Covid when the state realized they could give grades just for showing up and turning some thing....any thing, in. The attendance crisis alone confirms the reality of how bogus this propaganda actually is. This also applies to higher education. Ask Sharion Aycock who just booted four lawyers from their cases, some of which deflected and lied to her face. The Mississippi Miracle is a complete lie people. Young people have zero discipline nor respect for authority, and very little ability to use their minds except to figure out how to avoid thinking or actually working. If attempts are made to actually hold them accountable for their performance of a task, they fall apart and cry "my ADHD is kicking in". This continues now well into adulthood.
Government spending is what is shown here. Barksdale is who had the vision and money to help Mississippi. When it is others people money being spent (our tax dollars), the politicians never do what is best for the people.
1. Both NY and CA have double the cost of living, so salaries, land, building and maintenance cost much more per pupil;
2. What are the STEM related scores?
3. Were MS reading scores before or after failing 3rd graders held back?
The only way to improve education in MS is to adopt parental choice and a voucher system, like surrounding Southern States have demonstrated such that MS can just copy the success of Arkanas, eg.
53 cents of every tax dollar goes to public education. Results would be the same if they got 100%.
Wow. You mean to say that the obvious has slipped out? That paying administrators a lot of money doesn’t help “education” and that no amount of money is going to educate people who won’t study?
You hit the nail on the head with most of that. Except the genetics part. But yes, Jackson Prep administrators would not last a week at JPS.
I'm going with 6:20 am and 8:12 am for today's winners!
No one has mentioned that Mississippi can have smaller class sizes since we have a smaller population. That results in the opportunity for more individual attention to the pupils.
No one mentions testing differences...in the tests taken in the early grades to measure "ability/readiness" to learn as well ACT vs SAT. No one mentions the difference in textbooks chosen.
I had NY students in my classes freshman year and they were deliriously happy to have the same textbooks then that they had their senior year in high school.
And, for those who don't know, most private schools have an entrance exam so all their students start out with their " ability and readiness" known before they are accepted. And, if the parents are "wealthy" they can find a way to accept that child even if he doesn't score well. They also will take a less wealthy child with a high score and find ways to make the tuition " affordable" in hopes that child helps raise the averages for the entire school.
Well duh.
First of all... what in the AI generated slop is that sight? "Claude make me a site that shows that as we've increased investment in schools, they've done better" -- DOH! -- "Claude, umm, throw in a comparison to Private schools... but don't show how they do..."
So could take the test and scores would go up
As per usual, Carswell generally speaks the truth with his facts, but uses those facts for an incongruous conclusion.
Of course, as a whole, private schools perform better than almost all public schools. Most, but admittedly not all, of the students in private schools come from the higher educated, more affluent, and more stable home lives. How would those schools look if the doors were opened for everyone?
Many poor performing schools spend a significant amount of money with remediation and other programs, perceived to help the learners with the highest needs. And, of course, there are the regulations public schools must follow.
If the magic bean is to send public money to private schools, just abolish all public schools and send ALL students, along ALL with money, to the private schools. That would be a check of their oil.
Are there inefficiencies in public schools? I bet there are a lot. Is there sometimes fraud in public schools? I'm sure there is. But, the greatest inefficiencies are likely due primarily to regulations and the facts of the students who attend those schools.
Douglas, since you have all the answers, get your buddies in the Legislature to name you as State Superintendent, abolish all MDE regulations and start over.
As a society, we must try every possible way to educate all children. To do any less is to say, "I've got mine; you can go to hell."
There; I've given you two options to pick from, since you have all the answers.
It’s the student, not the $
And what benchmark are you using to prove that private schools perform better ?
Carswell Sez: "Just give the teacher unions what they ask for, and good outcomes will follow. Mississippi is starting to show that this simply is not true."
God help us if this state's 'leaders' fall for the myth that 'School Choice' (or whatever Carswell calls it today) is the path to pursue, and, once implemented "Good Outcomes will follow". If this farce is implemented, Mississippians will learn "this is not true".
If implemented, school choice will be a grand failure, Carswell will be on a boat back to the United Kingdom and Gerard can claim he never really supported it.
We label something “education” or “for the children” and people vote yes. Money goes to administration instead of the teachers/pupils. Education is top heavy. But in Richland Parish Louisiana, they got it right in 1968. They pay bonuses directly to the teachers. The construction (where most workers are involved) of a data center was responsible for each teacher in the parish receiving a $50,000 bonus.
Yup. "Students" in Mississippi are chattel to justify/encumber/draw down billions in state and federal dollars to their social security number. More so in "higher" education. What a joke the education "system" in Mississippi is. It's legal theft in the name of "for the children"....complete, utter bullshit.
Y’all know, parents also play a part in a child’s education. You don’t just send them to school to learn, you also teach them. Some think the school is solely responsible for educating the child. It is squarely on the parents to make sure their child has the best path forward in education. If anybody thinks a school administrator is going to deal with everything they have to deal with during a school year for $30,000 a year, they have never been in some of those positions. Anytime you guys want to step up and run a school or be a principal or superintendent all you have to do is go to college, get the certifications and tell us how easy it is.
Public schools were/are political platforms offered by corrupt politicians meant to give kids the illusion their parents could actually afford to have them - and so that everyone's considered "equal" regardlesso of effort. Think about that for a minute.....how many people actually shouldn't be having children because they really can't afford it.....a taxpayer funded education was never a right in the U.S. Constitution. The word education is not even in it.
@3:06 - You ever read the Mississippi Constitution?
Yup....and that's how backwards and gullable Mississippi is. The poorest state in the nation quibbling over how to pay for everyone's children to have an education....however inadequate.
Mississippi allows politicians to financially fleece them every day in the name of "for the children"....and THAT stupidity (and wishful thinking that was deliberately, and wisely omitted by the Founding Fathers in THE U.S. Constitution, which was meant to be a guide for all the othe state constitutions) is the reason Mississippi will never rise higher than 50th. If the poor, "rubbish" parents and families don't have any skin in the game regarding their own children, then they are in fact - mere chattel to be used. Sad, but true.
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