Many Mississippians feel cheated. Having voted overwhelmingly to approve a medical marijuana initiative last November, our state supreme court has now annulled this citizen-led decision.

Worse, by declaring our state’s initiative process ‘unworkable and inoperable’, our supreme court has in effect struck down the only system of direct democracy we had in the Magnolia state.

Irrespective of how you feel about medical marijuana, something has gone badly wrong when 70 percent of people vote for something in good faith, but then have their decision reversed.

The problem isn’t our judges, however, but the process for triggering initiatives in the first place. Under our state constitution (Section 273) a popular vote can take place to amend the constitution only if enough signatures are collected across each of the state’s five congressional districts.

The trouble is that our state only has four congressional districts, not five.  Mississippi has only had four congressional districts since 2002, when we lost our fifth congressional seat.  Our law makers somehow never got around to updating the rules.  Responsibility for where we are today must rest with the legislature.

Five years ago, I was helping lead Vote Leave, the official campaign that won the Brexit vote in Britain.  Brexit is one of the greatest examples of ordinary folk being able to vote to achieve real change.  It shows us why citizen-led initiatives are essential.

Having won the Brexit vote, all sorts of attempts were made to try to overturn the decision of the people. I know what it is like to have direct democracy opposed by those that don’t want change.

There may now need to be a special session of the legislature to address the specific issue of medical marijuana.  Serious thought also needs to be given as to how we fix our system of initiative.

Besides ensuring that there is a workable process in place to allow signatures to be gathered, here are three further suggestions on how to strengthen our system of direct democracy:

Initiatives should change state law, not just the state constitution. The initiative process that we have allows citizens to vote to change the state constitution.  It ought instead to allow the public to vote to change ordinary state law.

The state constitution is supposed to set out the basic rules under which those wanting to shape and influence public policy operate.  It is unwise to try to determine public policy by perennially seeking to incorporate amendments into the constitution itself.

Why?  There is a risk that our constitution could become a hodge podge of competing claims.  Far from empowering ordinary people, it easy to envisage how judges would be left to trying to untangle the inevitable incoherence.  That’s hardly people power.

More importantly, good public policy emerges when new ideas can be implemented and then improved upon, being modified or even reversed if they don’t work.  Using constitutional amendments to achieve specific public policy outcomes is the equivalent of engraving change in tablets of stone. It puts things beyond the reach of further democratic scrutiny.  Allowing citizens to vote to change state law, itself subject to normal electoral cycles, would be much healthier for democracy.

Direct democracy should be direct. Curiously, the system of direct democracy in our state is actually rather indirect. Once enough signatures have been gathered to allow an initiative to take place, the legislature has considerable leeway to in effect doctor the question before it is put to the people.

Reform should not only allow popular votes to approve new laws – as happens in many other states across America.  People should be able to vote on the question, not a doctored version of it designed to favor the outcomes politicians might prefer.

Tax neutral? It is easy to argue that voters should be generous with someone else’s money.  But it is also profoundly dangerous.  Initiatives should not become a device that allows people to vote to pass on the bill for something to their neighbors, or indeed to the next generation of Mississippi taxpayers.

Plenty of other states in America allow citizens a right of initiative yet insist that any proposals are tax neutral.  We should consider doing so too.

The failure of our legislature to update the rules on initiative over almost two decades demonstrates that politics is too important to be left to politicians. Reform is needed to ensure that Mississippi has a right of initiative that actually works.

My Father passed away from Alzheimer’s disease this past December. Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease and watching my Dad suffer from it was especially difficult for my entire family. 

Before entering a long-term care facility, my Dad received physical therapy in his home as his physical state declined. The visits did little to help, however. My Mother complained that the therapists were so overbooked that they could not schedule nearly as many visits as the doctor had requested. When they did visit, they rarely stayed for more than a few minutes.

My Mother didn’t know it at the time, but the home health agency that provided my Dad’s in-home physical therapy had little incentive to provide time-intensive, quality care. They had a monopoly on home health patients in the area they serviced. They would keep my Dad as a patient whether my Mother was happy with their services or not. 

Home health services enable the elderly to receive care in their homes rather than being institutionalized in nursing homes. And the role of home-based care is about to become more important than ever. 

The number of Americans over the age of 75 is expected to nearly double over the next twenty years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This aging population is expected to place massive burdens on our healthcare system, especially the long-term care industry. 

To address this looming crisis, President Biden has proposed spending an additional $400 billion in Medicaid funds on in-home long-term care services. Home-based care can be more cost-effective than nursing home care, and older Americans overwhelmingly prefer to receive care in their own home.

President Biden is right to look for solutions to the problems with long-term care. But a one-time cash infusion for Medicaid home health services would do nothing to change the real problems in the long-term care industry.

Thankfully, Mississippi does not have to wait for solutions from Washington D.C. There are steps we can take right now that would make a real difference in the quality, accessibility, and affordability of the care that our parents and grandparents receive. 

The most obvious reform would be to end the monopolies enjoyed by home health agencies like the one that treated my Father. Those monopolies are created by Mississippi’s certificate of need (CON) laws. 

CON laws push more seniors into nursing homes by limiting the availability of home health services. Certificate of need laws require anyone wanting to start a healthcare facility to first prove that there is an unmet need for those services in the community. Mississippi is one of only 14 states that impose CON requirements on home health agencies. 

Research shows that certificate of need laws serve to limit competition and prevent the expansion of the home health industry. A 2016 paper concluded that CON laws “act as a direct impediment of expansion of home- and community-based care” and “provide nursing homes with some degree of market power that does not allow the market to respond freely to price changes or federal policies.” Other research indicates that certificate of need requirements decrease the quality of care provided by home health agencies.

If our CON law wasn’t bad enough, Mississippi is also the only state in the nation that has imposed a complete ban on the opening of any new home health agencies in the state for the past 40 years. Instead, the state has chosen to allow existing home health agencies to have monopolies in their service areas. 

The Mississippi Justice Institute has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to end Mississippi’s 40-year ban on new home health agencies, as well as the state’s home health CON program. But state lawmakers should not wait for that litigation to conclude before taking the initiative to end these senseless policies.

Our parents and grandparents deserve a healthcare system that can adequately care for them. Monopolies that reduce the supply of care available to them, while driving up the price and decreasing the quality of their care should have no place in Mississippi.

The whole point of the American Dream and our free-market system in America is that people from all walks of life have the opportunity to dictate the direction of their own lives.

The entrepreneur is perhaps the most quintessential example of this sentiment. If someone has an innovative and marketable idea that helps people live better lives, America is supposed to be structured so that he can build off that idea.

However, despite this concept of entrepreneurship being inseparable from the American ethos, small businesses are continually struggling to enter the marketplace in an environment that favors big businesses that can weather the regulations and red tape much easier. This creates what some have called an economic "kill zone" for small businesses as they attempt to grow.

Some may suggest that this is a justification for the further institution of government regulation to ensure a "free" and competitive system. However, the solution may rather be the opposite: eliminating and reforming regulations that have hindered startups and small businesses from gaining the capital required to succeed.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, small businesses and startups have struggled with gaining enough capital to find a footing with their respective business plans. Although the pandemic has widespread effects that have been felt by businesses of all sizes, for many larger corporations it has been merely a speed bump. 

However, the pandemic exasperated the problems that small businesses already face. In the wake of government-imposed lockdowns and their collateral effects, unforeseen obstacles have left many of them crippled. This is especially true regarding the issue of raising capital.

As an issue compounded by the pandemic, the inability to obtain sufficient credit from banks was already one of the biggest problems small businesses face. Since the financial crisis in the late 2000s, government policy has imposed regulations that seek to protect the economy from poor financial investments. 

However, as time progresses, large corporations benefit from low-interest loans, while small businesses and startups are left dependent on government assistance programs.

Regulations may seem like the answer, but they often have the effect of bringing about unintended consequences. Just last year, the NFIB Research Center conducted a study asking small businesses what the 75 most important issues that they faced were. 

The first three issues were health insurance, finding and retaining good employees, and taxes, respectively. The fourth biggest issue was unreasonable government regulations that leave them effectively crippled in needless expenses and red tape. While these regulations may appear to be placed to protect our economic system, the reality is that regulations often harm the economy they are supposed to protect.

Some may suggest that the Covid pandemic has helped businesses push the reset button on the government regulation problem by forcing them to move to alternative business platforms such as the internet and by benefiting from government assistance. 

However, any sort of solution that is specific to the pandemic can only be temporary at best and leaves entrepreneurs reliant on the government at worst. In order to move ahead on promoting entrepreneurship, public policy should not perceive regulations as the tool to promote freedom. 

If the goal is for startups to get the credit and capital they need, policies should permit lenders to take the calculated risk, without the government dictating how it is supposed to operate on every level. If small businesses are to benefit from a free market, then it needs to be free!

Josiah Dalke is a Research Intern with the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He is a Washington State native seeking a government degree at Patrick Henry College.

Some have propounded that America is the epitome of a capitalist nation. With the largest GDP globally and generations of hard-working individuals behind it, the country has become the center of world financial markets. On the fundamental level, the country has free-market economics, a principle that is grounded in the very Constitution itself. 

One might think that with such a background of incredible success, the government would not want to enact policies that would go against this foundation of free-market economics. However, this is not always the case. Rather than leave a working system to continue to work, many in the government have continually tried to resize a shoe that already fit. 

Over the past several years, many Americans have become increasingly apprehensive of the encroaching power of government. As the federal government has assumed an arbitrary prerogative to interfere in the private sector at will, financial markets have become extremely sensitive to the fact that the government has expanded its intrusion into free markets.  

For instance, in recent weeks, investors have been uncertain about the direction of the Federal Reserve as President Biden considers leadership changes that would be in line with his policy priorities of big government expansion and spending. The concerns of investors are not unfounded. The recent administration has increasingly embraced the policies of Keynesian economics that often prioritize government control of the economy as a key to market success. 

To recognize the effects of such a posture of government control towards the private sector, one need not look any further than the nation of China. In an attempt to rein in control of financial institutions, the Chinese government banned financial institutions from trading in cryptocurrency.

This led to an 11 percent drop in the value of Bitcoin in less than 2 hours. Many have grappled with this recent spectacular decrease in the value of cryptocurrency. These are ultimately the shockwaves of government overreach being felt. This is all despite the fact that the Chinese government has no direct policy jurisdiction over the American economy.

If the Chinese domestic policies of economic interference and government control can have such a rippling effect on even the American economy, how much more danger is there when American investors have an ever-encroaching government of their own to deal with? Indeed, the United States federal government itself is proposing even more regulations for cryptocurrency that have made many investors uneasy in an already fluctuating market. 

Despite the grand plans and agendas of economic bureaucrats and regulators, such plans beg the question of whether or not government oversight has a consistent track record of bringing about prosperity. If America wants a more prosperous economy, is a conglomerate of government bureaucracies really the way to achieve it? The success of free economies suggest otherwise. 

“The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.” -F. A. Hayek

“People overestimate what they can accomplish in one legislative session and underestimate what they can accomplish in ten.” 

In this series, we are conducting a review of the incredible record Mississippi lawmakers have put together over the past 10 years. The list provided here is not comprehensive, and we feature only the policies we like: some of which were initiated by MCPP (marked by an *asterisk* below). (Or, in the case of the many accomplishments below, nearly all of which were initiated by MCPP.)

So far, we have covered:

10 Years of Social Welfare Achievements

10 Years of Religious Liberty Achievements

10 Years of Second Amendment Achievements

10 Years of Pro-life Achievements

10-Years of Healthcare Achievements

10 Years of Education Achievements

In this installment, we will be looking at legislative accomplishments aimed at cutting red tape to make it easier to start a business, obtain a good job, and lead a good life in Mississippi. These are the highpoints over the past 10 years:

In 2013, MCPP worked closely with Senator Angela Hill to pass the state’s first cottage food law (SB 2553). This reform unleashed a culinary revolution of small entrepreneurs baking cakes and cookies and making pickles and other homemade goods. The law exempted small entrepreneurs from onerous regulations better suited to largescale providers. In 2020, we successfully expanded the law, with a bill (HB 326) sponsored by Rep. Casey Eure.*

In 2015 and 2016, we led the way in passing a legislative package known as “Financial Ready.” These reforms, passed as part of separate bills related to performance-based budgeting, require state agencies to identify their dependency on federal grants and quantify the fiscal and other compliance costs associated with these grants. Mississippi was the second state in the country to enact Financial Ready.*

Also in 2015, MCPP launched the effort to combat the Obama administration’s arguably unconstitutional Clean Power Plan. In addition to collaborating with state policymakers to voice their objections as part of the federal rulemaking process, we worked on various bills to provide for more transparency and accountability for the plan. In the end, lawmakers passed a resolution declaring Mississippi’s opposition to this federal attempt to take over state electrical grids (SCR 637).*

In 2017, MCPP was proud to work with Americans for Prosperity (MS-AFP) to help pass a law (HB 1425) that requires the state to actively review new regulations issued by occupational licensing boards. AFP led the way in this effort, and we assisted with messaging support and other expertise. The law implements a structure to provide “active supervision” over occupational licensing boards so that they “use the least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers from present, significant and substantiated harms that threaten public health and safety.” In 2020, Rep. Jerry Turner strengthened the review process so as to apply to existing (and not just new) regulations (HB 1104).

In 2019, the Legislature made it easier for certain Mississippi residents with a criminal record to obtain an occupational license. Known as “Fresh Start,” the law strikes a balance between protecting public safety while helping ex-offenders reintegrate into their families and communities by getting good-paying jobs. According to the Institute for Justice, following the passage of Fresh Start, “Mississippi now has some of the best laws in the country for ex-offenders seeking licenses.” Fresh Start was sponsored by Rep. Mark Baker and Senator John Polk (SB 2781) and was a priority for MCPP.*

Also, in 2019, Mississippi became the first state in the nation to pass a comprehensive law to protect the privacy of those who give to the causes and charities they hold dear. This law has sparked a movement of states committed to protecting free speech and the freedom of association from government agencies seeking to weaponize and politicize charitable giving. This legislation (HB 1205) was sponsored by Rep. Jerry Turner and Rep. Mark Baker and was a priority for MCPP.*  

In 2020, the Legislature again turned toward eliminating burdensome occupational licensing requirements. Sponsored by Senator Chuck Younger and championed by Rep. Steve Hopkins, the Military Family Freedom Act (SB 2117) makes it easier for military personnel and their families to obtain a Mississippi occupational license by recognizing existing credentials and experience earned in other states. Arguably the best law of its kind in the country, this reform put Mississippi on the map as a destination state for military families seeking to live and work here.*

In 2021, thanks to the leadership of our legal center, the Mississippi Justice Institute, the Legislature altogether eliminated occupational licensing requirements for select practitioners in the cosmetology field. This law (HB 1312) was sponsored by Rep. Jerry Turner.*

Finally, in 2021, building upon our success with the Military Family Freedom Act, lawmakers made it easier for anyone who has earned an occupational license in another state to obtain a license in Mississippi. Authored by Rep. Becky Currie, this legislation (HB 1263) was a priority for MCPP and the result of years of hard work to make it easier for qualified professionals to move to Mississippi and work in their chosen field.*

One of the dangers of an ever-evolving technological landscape is that people can often get lost in the technical weeds without looking to the practical benefit.

Such is the case when it comes to technological advances in agriculture, especially in regards to government regulation and control. 

The state of Mississippi is ripe with opportunities to advance agricultural technology further. AutoProbe, for example, is a rising technology in the state that uses robotics to help gather uniform soil samples and analyze them. This enables farmers to work the land more efficiently and helps with greater crop yields.

Furthermore, farmers use drone technology to make strategic agricultural decisions from information gathered from the air. But not only does this technology enable an aerial view of farms, but drones also help find patterns of defoliation, small canopies, and color changes in crops. All of these factors impact the final crop significantly, and drones can more quickly and efficiently determine this information.

Finally, smart-monitoring technology helps farmers conserve resources and energy to most effectively produce food for consumption. Combines that would take three times as long to harvest a crop can now be done quickly and efficiently thanks to the ability to monitor rain and radar simply from one’s phone. This is even easier to accomplish with hands-free satellite guidance.

Despite these immense benefits, some policies have proved to be a boundary to the prosperity that comes from common-sense policies that allow innovative farmers to be the most effective. The problem is that many state and federal regulations on agriculture are overzealous in the mitigation of safety risks -often to the detriment of agricultural efficiency and innovation.

Take the state of California, for example. According to the California Code of Regulations, an operator must accompany all self-propelled equipment when in motion. This means that regardless of whether the machinery in question needs an operator, an operator is still required to legally handle it, depleting the purpose of the machinery being “autonomous.”

Such a policy may be put in place for the sake of safety but does not consider the practical effects as it dissuades farmers from investing in more efficient, automatic machinery. After all, why would a farmer purchase expensive autonomous machinery over manually operated machinery if regulations remove the practical benefits of automation? It simply does not stand to reason, which is perhaps why not many states have adopted the same policy.

However, unreasonable boundaries to the use of technology in agriculture do not stop with autonomous machinery. Although there may often be freedom to produce certain agricultural products using technological innovation, there have been technology restrictions on how farmers can sell those same products. The regulatory boundaries follow farmers even if they try to use certain technologies to sell what they produce.

For instance, many states, including Mississippi, have “cottage food laws” that prohibit farmers and others from using the internet to sell processed agricultural products, such as pickled products, dried fruits and vegetables, jellies, and many other goods. 

This effectively stops the use of mobile apps and other technologies that would allow farmers to use the internet to sell such products to potential customers. By limiting such agricultural activities to in-person sales, there is a government-imposed boundary on farmers trying to take advantage of even basic internet technology to sell their products.

The key to moving agricultural technology policy forward in Mississippi is finding solutions to policy problems, expanding technology horizons, and giving farmers the chance to press ahead without being legally restricted to outdated methods.

Innovation has always been the key to American economic success. Giving our agriculture system the edge it needs to succeed has to be of the highest priority when legislators gather to find solutions.

Mississippi farmers should have the freedom to use technological innovation as a way to work their farms as efficiently as possible as they seek to provide a livelihood for their families. Public policy should take proactive steps to provide safeguards against technology regulations so that they have the full liberty to do just that. 

Josiah Dalke is a Research Intern with the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He is a Washington State native seeking a government degree at Patrick Henry College.

In the wake of the new presidential administration, government spending has increased to never-before-seen levels. Despite the economic downturn brought about by COVID-19, the federal spending budget has only expanded. 

Much of the spending has been propounded in the name of economic recovery from Covid. As if the government were a group of benevolent humanitarians, it makes bold promises of help and recovery from the economic downturn -while spending other people’s money and then taking the credit for it. 

In the words of Henry Hazlitt, “The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from someone else.” In line with this simple truth, the very same federal government proclaiming that it will “build back better” has put forth a tax agenda that threatens the jobs and industry that actually bring real prosperity. 

The higher taxes that are necessary to pay for such a budget are bad enough, but there is more to such a budget than meets the eye. One need not be an economic analyst to recognize that something is amiss in the American economy. 

A simple glance at the rising prices across all sorts of sectors has left consumers with a much higher bill at the gas pump, the grocery store, and the car lot. Companies across the country are warning that prices will continue to rise as a result of inflation. While the government is able to meet its spending goals, it is the taxpayer that ultimately foots the bill for the inflation that results. 

To put this in perspective, recall the fact that this inflation is occurring in addition to the high taxes. As if the high taxes themselves weren’t enough to satisfy the federal government’s insatiable appetite to spend other people’s money, they tax the citizens and lower the value of the citizens’ incomes by printing more money and lowering the value of the dollar. 

While taxes might be “the front door” for the government to put more of the citizens’ incomes into it its aggressive spending agendas, inflation is the result of such policies.  It is “the back door” that government uses to make the citizens foot the bill if their tax money can’t even fund the runaway spending proposals.    

The enormous federal spending threatens the economic well-being of Americans by increasing their tax burden and then additionally lowering the value of their hard-earned dollars. Ronald Reagan’s quip about government spending stands true: "We could say they spend like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors, because the sailors are spending their own money."

With new COVID cases remaining persistently low and multiple vaccines available to all adults, Mississippi appears to have fully returned to “normal.” 

Employers navigating this return have adopted a wide range of policies, from requiring masks for non-vaccinated employees to requiring most employees to get vaccinated. Are these policies legal?

Yes, with very few exceptions.  

First, remember that Mississippi is an “at will” employment state. That means an employee can quit his or her job for any reason or no reason at all.  Likewise, an employer can fire an employee for any reason (as long as it would not violate discrimination laws covering protected classes) or no reason at all. 

This means that employers have a very wide scope in setting the rules that employees must follow. After all, it’s their business. And if an employee doesn’t like the employer’s policies (like a mask or vaccine policy), they can quit the job if they so choose. 

Some employees mistakenly believe that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents their employer from asking about their vaccine status. HIPAA prevents certain covered entities which have sensitive patient health information from sharing it with others without the patient’s consent. It does not prevent employers – or anyone else for that matter – from asking anyone about their health information.  

Some of this confusion may stem from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prevents employers from asking job candidates if they have a disability before making a job offer and requires employers to maintain the confidentiality of any employee medical information obtained after hiring. But nothing in the ADA prevents an employer from asking employees about their vaccine status during a pandemic or requiring vaccinations for employees.

The ADA does require employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees who cannot get vaccinated due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief. However, such an accommodation is not required if it would pose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.  

Another source of confusion seems to be a section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which prevents the government from mandating vaccines that have only received an emergency use authorization from the FDA. But that law does not prevent private employers from requiring their employees to receive such vaccines as a condition of employment.  

The best advice for employees is to ignore any claims they see on social media regarding their employer’s rights or responsibilities. If an employer adopts policies that concern you, talk to them about your concerns. If a compromise cannot be reached, and if the issue is important enough to you, then it’s ultimately up to you to decide if you want to continue your employment relationship.  It’s a free country after all. 

Students who are falling behind in school – in particular, those who are at below grade level – are at greater risk of dropping out of high school. This can have detrimental lifelong impacts, as well as negative economic consequences for dropouts and society at large.

*This report can be read in its entirety here.*

This issue is much more important in this era of COVID-19, as many more children are falling behind grade level. Policymakers should therefore pay attention to state remedial education programs and consider whether current resources, both state and federal, are being used to the best advantage for kids who are falling behind.   

The Achievement Gap Has Gotten Bigger

Research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic by the consulting firm McKinsey found that minority and low-income students are at much greater risk of falling behind because of school closures and disruptions. They found that:

• Black students may fall behind by an additional 10.3 months;
• Hispanic students may fall behind by an additional 9.2 months;
• Low-income students may fall behind by an additional year.

Achievement gaps between groups of students were very large and stubbornly persistent for decades heading into the COVID-19 pandemic.  And, from March 2020 to June 2021, McKinsey estimates that these achievement gaps will grow by another 15 to 20 percent. 

McKinsey forecasts that the learning loss from COVID-19 “may translate into long-term harm for individuals and society.” They estimate that the decline in student achievement will have a national cost in upcoming years of $110 billion in annual earnings for students, higher crime and incarceration rates, and other negative social outcomes.

Other recent studies are arriving at very similar conclusions.

New Solutions Are Needed

Given the decades-long failure of existing remediation programs and the acute learning losses due to the pandemic, it is time to try something new to help students who are falling behind.

The research consensus on remediation programs for public school students is that they have performed poorly for decades. Federal and state funding for remediation programs have increased significantly over time. For example, federal Title I-A funding increased by 81 percent between 1980 and 2017 in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.[1] Despite this large increase in funding, Title I has not boosted student achievement (Brookings report: Dynarksi and Kainz, 2015) and been poorly targeted to the students most in need (Hamilton Project, Gordon, 2016).  Further, achievement gaps between groups of students have been stubbornly persistent for decades (Hanushek, et al., 2020).

Students who fall behind grade level and remain behind for a period of years often end up as high school dropouts. The economic consequences of dropping out of high school are severe: lower lifetime earnings, more poverty, increased use of government welfare programs, reduced generation of tax revenue, higher rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, higher incarceration rates, more drug use, lower life expectancy, etc.

Given the expensive and absolute failure of federal remediation programs, it is clearly left up to the states to do something about helping students who are behind grade level.

[1]Congressional Research Service, 2017. Title I-A grants are to be used to “provide supplementary educational and related services to low achieving and other students attending elementary and secondary schools with relatively high concentrations of students from low-income families.”

*To continue reading this report in its entirety, click here.*