How much do you imagine it costs to send a child to public school in Hinds County every year?  $5,000 per year?  Maybe $10,000?  $15,000?

Actually, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education, when you divide the number of students attending school by the total expenditure, in 2023-24 Hinds County spent $16,589 per student.

That is more than twice the average private school fees in our state.  Indeed, $16,589 is not far off what it would cost to send your child to a top private school.

Now ask yourself if each child in Hinds County is getting a top education for that $16,589?  Of course not.  A large chunk of the kids can’t read or do basic math.  One in three of them regularly skip school. 

So, why not give families in Hinds County the right to take a portion of that $16,589 and allocate it to a school of their choice?

It’s not just Hinds County.  The same question could be asked in Madison ($17,037 spent for every public school pupil per year) or Rankin ($15,198 per pupil per year), or Canton ($18,683) or De Soto ($13,820).

Even if you take the Department of Education’s own more conservative figure for per pupil spending (which includes all the ‘no-show’ students), Mississippi still spends an average of $14,676 per student. 

Despite all that money, 4 in 10 fourth graders in Mississippi public schools cannot read properly.  Eight in 10 eighth grade kids in Mississippi were not proficient in math in 2022.  One in 4 kids routinely skips school.

Nor has $14,676 per student spending translated into better teacher pay.  Notwithstanding recent pay increases, our teachers still earn significantly less than they did in 2010, when you adjust for inflation. 

If you happen to be one of the fortunate families happy with the public education options available, great.  No need to change and no one is proposing any changes that will affect you.  But why not allow those families unhappy how things are the freedom to take their tax dollars to a school that best meets their needs?

Suggesting this provokes outrage not from parents, but from various vested interests who like things the way they are.  They like a system that puts the $14,676 they get for your child into their administration budget, rather than the classroom.  School superintendents making more than the Governor want to keep control of their multimillion dollar budgets for a reason.  It’s a boondoggle for bureaucrats. 

School Choice will not impoverish public schools.  The legislation that Speaker Jason White is proposing would allow families control over the state portion of funding, not locally raised revenues or federal dollars. 

In Hinds County, for example, that would mean families being able to allocate no more than $6,700 of the $16,589 overall per pupil funding.  (Rather than depleting Hinds County public schools’ budget, actually it would make Hinds County better off in terms of per pupil spend.)

Giving families control over $6,700 of the state funds will not mean a flood of kids coming into your well run school district.  Why not?  Because the legislation proposed specifically gives school boards the final say on capacity.

What anti School Choice campaigners really fear is not the “wrong” kids coming to your school.  What they fear is that you start wondering what the heck they’ve been doing with the $14,676 they get for your child or grandchild every year. 

All of the arguments we are now hearing against School Choice in Mississippi have been heard in each of the surrounding states that have since adopted School Choice. 

Alabama’s new Educations Savings Account program, which has just opened for applications, has been wildly oversubscribed.  The program provides $7,000 funding per student attending a participating private school, while those enrolled in home education programs are eligible for $2,000 per student. 

Arkansas allows all K-12 students access to an Education Savings Account from 2025, into which the state government pays the state portion of per pupil funding ($6,600 per year).  Families will be able to use this $6,600 money they are given to pay for their child education, including private school tuition.  Arkansas also allows public to public school transfers, allowing districts to define capacity. 

Louisiana’s GATOR program starts in 2025-26 and establishes an Education Savings Account for those on low incomes, with the details are still being finalized as the law only recently passed.  Louisiana already has public to public School Choice.

Texas and Tennessee, too, are at this very moment debating legislation that would create a universal Education Savings Account for families in those states, too.

None of the scare stories we now hear in Mississippi materialised in any of these neighboring states.  None of these states has been bankrupted like the critics claimed by letting mom and dad have parent power.  Instead, all the evidence suggests School Choice has started to improve education outcomes.

Another week, another massive investment project was unveiled in Mississippi.  On Thursday, Governor Tate Reeves announced that a $10 Billion data center is coming to Meridian. One deal alone isn’t proof that the economy is taking off, but it does add to a pile of evidence suggesting that Mississippi could be on the cusp of a new era of growth.  If Mississippi keeps going the way data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggests we are moving, this state won’t be 50th out of 50 for much longer.
 
Is it too far-fetched to imagine young people wanting to move to Oxford, Starkville, Laurel, or the Coast, the way they currently want to go to Austin or Nashville?
 
Encouraging, too, is Mississippi’s political leadership at the start of the new legislative session. 
 
Income tax abolition, essential if we are to be competitive, is now the number one priority for the Governor and the Speaker, Jason White. School choice, the only sure fire way to improve education standards and prepare young people for the world of work, is on Speaker White’s priority list for this legislative session. Removing red tape, particularly as it restricts the healthcare economy, is also being actively considered, with the State Board of Health firmly committed to change.
 
These changes are essential if our state is to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity.  But even now the forces of inertia are trying to stop change.  If they succeed, Mississippi will stall. 
 
(Almost) everyone now says they support income tax elimination.  Yet some are quite clearly only paying lip service to the idea, desperately seeking to avoid passing legislation this session that commits to actual elimination.  At the same time, they talk up the idea of cutting the grocery tax as a deliberate distraction strategy, knowing full well that cutting the income tax would have vastly more impact.
 
While Mississippi considers school choice, we are surrounded by states that are actually doing it.  Tennessee is in the process of passing the legislation this week. Yet the forces of inertia in Mississippi say we need more time to consider Education Savings Accounts.  Really?  Can you not look across the state line at Arkansas or Alabama to see how it is transforming education for the better?  Perhaps your call for “more time” just an excuse?
 
Maybe, like the disgraceful School Superintendent in Madison County did this week, the forces of inertia circulate false claims about school choice?  (No, public to public school choice does not take away local tax dollars, since it only involves the state portion of the budget.  No, private schools do not lack accountability.  They are more accountable than any public school.)
 
The sort of misleading claims made by the Madison School Superintendent are attempts to prevent change by those that think they, not pesky parents, know best for your child. The forces of inertia are also lobbying aggressively in the legislature to kill off reforms that will remove health care regulation that intentionally limits the number of providers. The truth is that for years all of those against lower taxes, less regulation and opposed to school choice in our state have been able to get their way.  That is why Mississippi has not grown the way Alabama or Texas have. I’m optimistic that this time the forces of inertia can be overcome.  Why?
 
Firstly, it is increasingly obvious that Mississippi could be doing things differently.  You only need to look across the river at Arkansas under Sarah Huckabee Sanders (tax cuts, school choice, red tape removal), or Alabama (ditto), or at almost any southern state to see it. Secondly, Trump.  The 47th President is committed to tax cuts, red tape reduction and school choice.  This will help tilt opinion in our state.
 
Imagine for a moment that you are a local Republican party office holder keen to catch the eye of the new White House administration.  Perhaps you want an appointment or some kind of endorsement?  Do you really imagine Donald J. Trump would pick you out in such a crowded field if you have been anti-tax cuts?  Do you honestly think Team Trump would say, “Yes, Mr. President, this local guy in Mississippi who killed off School Choice is our guy”? If nothing else, self-interest will move the dial towards the right agenda in Mississippi over the next four years.
 
Finally, I think inertia can be overcome because of Elon Musk. 
 
Something weird has happened since Elon bought X / Twitter.  Politics is now increasingly unfiltered.  Even if you are one of a majority of folk that don’t use X, you will have felt the effect of this form of unfiltered politics. The forces of inertia can be petulant.  They can lobby and bully to try to stop change.  But they cannot any longer escape the consequences of trying to stop change. Cheer up!  2025 is going to be awesome.  Mississippi is on the cusp a great change.

Remember when Japan was predicted to overtake America? 

Back in the 1980s, Japan was the coming country. Japan’s economy had enjoyed decades of rapid growth. Her exports where everywhere, and with inventions like the Sony Walkman, it looked as though Japan was the technological future, too.

America looked like a power in decline. Forty years ago, many traditional US industries were failing. Crime seemed out of control. 
 

By the mid 1990s, Japan’s GDP was 71 percent that of the US - and the gap looked to be closing. One “expert”, Herman Kahn predicted that Japan would surpass America as the world’s largest economy by 2000.

Today? Japan’s economy is a quarter the size of America’s. Japan hasn’t produced much innovation since the Tamagotchi (Don’t ask). Despite all the talk about Japanese electronic wizardry, the great digital innovations of the past few decades have happened on this side of the Pacific.
 
Today, of course, we’re told that the great ascending power is not Japan, but China. China’s economic growth over the past 40 years has been phenomenal. In industry after industry, Chinese exports have crushed the competition. China, unlike Japan, is not just an economic competitor but a strategic rival to the United States, pursuing an aggressively expansionist policy in the Pacific, south Asia and parts of Africa.

By 2021, China’s GDP was almost 80 percent that of the US and the experts were telling us China would overtake America within a couple of decades. 
 
But look at what has happened since. China’s economy seems to have peaked as a percentage of US output. China has even more debt-induced malinvestment than Japan had during the 80s asset bubble. 

Chinese demographics (current Total Fertility Rate 1.02) are in an even worse shape than Japan’s (TFR 1.30). And China’s fiscal position is unlikely to improve with all of President Xi’s imperial ambitions to fund.
 
As recently as 2008, Europe’s economy was about the same size as the United States’. Today, America’s economy is twice the size of Europe’s. Looking at the number of large companies established over the past 50 years on either side of the Atlantic. Home Depot, a single US company, eclipses all the new businesses created in the European Union since 1974.

So why are Japan, China and Europe all in their different ways underperforming America? Because each are, in their different ways, reverting back to a type of political economic tradition far less successful than America’s.

Japan, superficially Western in so many ways since 1945, has behind that façade a strongly corporatist political economy. A handful of well-connected conglomerates are able to dominate markets, but shielded from internal competition, they don’t innovate. (To appreciate how stifling this is, try to imagine what America might be like, for example, if IBM was the only computer company, with all the competitors kept out.)

China, after a brief move towards market liberalization begun by Deng Xiaoping, is reverting to what you might think of as a Ming tradition. Dissent is stamped on. A bureaucratic elite micromanages and controls. The sclerotic effects are already being felt. 
 
Europe, repeated rescued from an indigenous form of autocracy by the Anglosphere powers (1704, 1815, 1914, 1944, Cold War), is tragically reverting to type. Today, a courtly elite enthroned in Brussels attempts to regulate and control ever more aspects of social and economic life across the Continent, destroying it in the process (Mercifully, Britain escaped from this in 2016 and might yet return to a more Atlantic tradition).
 
To flourish, the United States needs to stay true to the political and economic model envisaged by the Founders; limited government, lower taxes and liberty. The good news is that with the new administration in Washington, this may well be about to happen. Elon Musk is determined not only to cut federal spending (something America urgently needs to do to avoid bankruptcy). He is looking to turbo charge productivity growth, moving people from the public to the private sector, and radically cut red tape. Reports of America’s relative decline seem to me to be wildly exaggerated. If Musk and co deliver half of what they are promising, we might just be on the cusp of an extraordinary period of progress and innovation in America. The divergence between America and the rest of the world is only going to accelerate.

I feel an overwhelming sense of privilege to be onboard! 

Parental choice is the only certain way to raise standards and counter left- wing values in the classroom. MCPP has a plan to make this happen in Mississippi.  
 
Mississippi is already surrounded on three sides by states that have school choice. Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana have all now passed legislation to give families control over their child’s share of the education budget. However, perennial efforts to achieve something similar in Mississippi through Education Savings Accounts, or ESA's, have failed. Each time a universal ESA proposal has been attempted the legislation dies. We would love to see a universal program of publicly funded ESA's in Mississippi, which families could use to pay for school, but I believe the chances of such legislation passing anytime soon are slim.
 
That’s why MCPP is pursuing a different three step strategy to achieve universal school choice in our state:

  1. Step One – An individual budget for every student: During the last legislative session, MCPP spearheaded efforts to secure a school-funding formula in order that every public school student now has a personalized education budget.  

 
We did so knowing that once each student has a personalized budget, it becomes much easier to argue that they should then be allowed to take their budget to a school of their choice. We have achieved this.  
 

  1. Step Two – Public-to-public school choice:  Thanks to a bill (HB 1341) passed in the last legislative session, military families, including those in the National Guard, are able to send their children to a traditional public school of their choice—if it has capacity. 

 
We are openly pushing for legislation in the 2025 session to allow each student to take their personal budget to a public school of their choice, giving every family in Mississippi the right that military families enjoy. Responsible conservative policy means allowing school boards to have the final say over capacity and giving strong safeguards to school so that they do not have to take students with a history of disciplinary problems. 
 

  1. Step 3 – Parental Choice Tax Credit: Tens of thousands of families in our state choose not to send their children to public school, either because they homeschool or they send their children to private school. We believe they should be able to claim a refundable income tax credit to help them with expenses, like tuition and fees.

 
We have a carefully costed plan for a Parental Choice Tax Credit that would achieve this, building on the tax credit system we already have. Interestingly, the Republicans in Washington, D.C., have indicated that they might pass a similar tax credit federally. These three steps would ensure universal school choice in our state—and give families in Mississippi the choices that families now have in neighboring states. The good news is that Mississippi is already halfway to making this happen!
 
Morton Blackwell, the great conservative activist, likes to say that “In politics nothing moves unless it’s pushed”. MCPP is happy to push – and to push hard …. even if it upsets one or two anti-school choice activists.   It’s what we exist to do.
 
We are open about our goal and our strategy for achieving school choice because we know that sunlight is the best disinfectant.  There’s no need for mystery and opaque maneuverings.  Nor will we shy away from engaging directly those that might like to stop parental choice by stealth.  If school choice is opposed by lawmakers that sent their own kids to private school, we won’t hesitate to ensure that Mississippi knows.    
 
Over the course of the coming months as we head into the 2025 legislative session, I will be sure to update you on progress – and I’ll be sure to inform you who supports and who opposes parental choice! This is a fight we can win!

Donald Trump is the most pro-school choice President in history.  “As president”, he has said, “I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child”. “If we can put a man on the moon and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America”.
 
Unfortunately, Mississippi has made little progress towards school choice due to a tiny handful of anti-school choice Republicans. Even though three of our surrounding states, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana, now have school choice, we still don’t. The biggest obstacle to the education reforms we need is the current Senate Leader, Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann.  He has taken every opportunity to thwart efforts to achieve more parent power.
 
Initially, Mr. Hosemann took to claiming that school choice would be unconstitutional.  This is an erroneous argument, as a carefully prepared legal briefing note we circulated shows.  Having conceded that there is, indeed, no constitutional barrier to school choice, our Lieutenant Governor began to search for alternative excuses.  Schools might not have the capacity, seems to be his latest one. 
 
That is why the draft bill we worked on ensures school boards get the final say as to their capacity.  No one is forcing them to take more kids.  Another excuse crumbles….. One by one the arguments invoked by anti-school choice Republicans to justify their inertia have been dismantled.  But it still appears that the will to give Mississippi families the parent power they have in our neighboring states just isn’t there.
 
Why is a Republican Lieutenant Governor in a conservative state teaming up with progressive activist groups, like the Parents’ Campaign, and briefing leftist media outlets like Mississippi Today to thwart reform? Mr. Hosemann, I gather, has indicated he is flat out opposed to a tax credit. This means Mr. Hosemann is very likely to be on a collision course with the next President, whose team, I understand, is literally finalizing plans for a federal tax credit right now.  Will Mr. Hosemann continue to oppose a tax credit?
 
Mr. Trump has made it clear he will abolish the federal Department of Education.  Trump does not intend to dismantle power in DC only to see it handed over to local bureaucrats in Jackson.  He would like to see parents have control over their child’s education. If a handful of local Republicans continue to kill off school choice (“It died in committee”, is likely to be their next excuse), I suspect that the conspicuous absence of invitations to Mar-a-Lago may become the least of their worries.

In a fight between anti school choice Republicans and Team Trump, I imagine Trump will win.  He’d certainly have support from the local conservative base who have voted conservative for years but not always got a great deal to show for it. Perhaps part of the problem is that one or two of our anti school choice Republicans have an unfortunate habit of never wanting to engage with anyone with different ideas to their own.   That can become a problem if you don’t actually have very many ideas of your own.  I’m not sure that a policy on four semesters a year, or cell phone usage in schools, quite cuts it ….
 
Those that get endorsed by Trump to run in 2027 will, I imagine, be Republicans that actually support the new President’s agenda in the coming months, particularly the 2025 session. There’s still time to get on board with school choice in Mississippi. 

“All political lives end in failure” observed the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. His did. So, too, will Joe Biden’s. 

Forced out after four years, it is difficult to think of a single significant achievement by the Biden administration. Biden’s legacy will be higher national debt and a more divided America. But is it really the case that political lives always end in failure?
 
Watching the recent movie about Ronald Reagan, it was obvious that after two terms in office, the Gipper’s accomplishments clearly outweighed any defeats. Reagan’s legacy was a buoyant economy, stronger America and the defeat of Soviet communism.

If Biden’s legacy is of extreme failure, and Reagan’s of remarkable success, many politicians don’t seem to leave much of a legacy at all, good or bad. Like footprints on a beach at low tide, tomorrow it will be as though they were never there at all. 
 
Many politicians fail to leave much of a legacy for the simple reason that they hold office but have little idea what to do with it. That’s not, of course, what they tell themselves in the early days. In the afterglow of their election victory, surrounded by staffers, and praised by smooth-tongued lobbyists, political leaders busy themselves with the business of government. 

Yet often the urgent squeezes out the important. Once in office, they end up playing the role of Senator, Congressman, or state Governor, like an actor in a movie handed their lines by someone else. 
 
Rather than implementing a blueprint that matters, they are distracted by the trivial. Instead of delivering difficult messages, they delude themselves that another press conference about blah blah is vital. 

Rare is the type of politician who can make the political weather, rather than respond to it. Many politicians fail to leave a legacy because they fool themselves that they are responsible for things that would have happened anyhow. Or they imagine that they will be fondly remembered for things that happened on their watch. 

How many Mississippians remember who was governor when the Nissan factory came to Mississippi? How many credit whoever happened to be in office? Any politician in our state wanting to leave a real legacy needs to address those things that have kept our state 50th out of 50 for too long.

First is education. Mississippi needs a wholesale reform of education, with school choice and parent power. With so many surrounding states implementing universal school choice, change is possible. The first wave of Mississippi leaders to actually come out and lead on this will be seen to deliver historic changes for the better. 
 
Second is the state economy. Mississippi’s economy continues to be weighed down by a relatively high tax burden and red tape. Despite cutting the state income tax, Mississippi families and businesses still pay more than in surrounding states. Certificate of Need laws hold back the healthcare economy in our state. State leaders that lead on lower taxes and deregulation would stand out nationally and historically.

These are the issues that will define the future of our state. Our state leaders will be defined by if and how they address them. State leaders that address these issues will leave a giant legacy. Those that don’t, won't be a household name in their own home.

There’s a real chance we could see school choice in Mississippi. Thanks to our new school funding formula, each public school student in our state now has a personalized budget designed to meet their individual education needs. Why not let families take their personalized budget to a school of their choice?  
 
That is precisely what families can now do in three of our neighboring states, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama.  So, why not Mississippi?
 
One of the obstacles standing in the way of school choice in Mississippi has been the ridiculously misnamed “Parent’s” Campaign.  For years, the “Parent’s” Campaign has lobbied lawmakers to prevent parent power. Nancy Loome, who runs the “Parent’s” Campaign, was at it again recently.  In “The Lie of School Choice”, she recycled various tired myths and misinformation about what parent power really means.
 
Myth One was the claim that school choice takes money away from public schools.  It doesn’t. Now that every child in the public school system in our state has a dedicated budget, we are proposing that they be allowed to take their share of state funds to a public school of their choice.  Any family that prefers not to take up their child’s place within the public school system, because they opt to go private or to home school instead, would receive a tax credit to off-set the fact they are currently paying for their child’s education twice. It is factually wrong to claim that any of this would divert public money away from public schools. 

Myth Two is that school choice means some hidden agenda to deny admissions. Under our proposals, each school district would have the power to define capacity.  This is precisely in line with what Lieutenant Governor, Delbert Hosemann, has said publicly he would support. Schools must have strong safeguards that allow them to reject applications from those out of district with a history of disciplinary problems.
 
Myth Three is that school choice is somehow unfair because it doesn’t provide transportation costs. We don’t propose paying for transportation costs for a very good reason.  The point of school choice is to raise standards in failing districts, not to facilitate the transfer of kids from failing districts into good performing districts.  
 
Myth Four is that school choice is all about benefiting private schools, rather than raising standards in public ones.  Again, this is false. Private schools in our state are doing fine.  Since 2021, the number of kids enrolled in private schools in our state rose from 49,000 to 56,000.  It is public schools, where enrolment fell 12 percent over the past decade, where school choice in most needed. We want school choice in Mississippi not because we are against public schools, but because we support them and want them to thrive.

Myth Five is the claim that “Mississippi’s public schools are delivering impressive results”. Some districts achieve good results.  Most do not. One in four students in the public school system in our state routinely skips school.  Four in ten fourth graders lack the basic reading standard required to read this sentence.  Eight in ten eighth graders are not proficient in math. Mississippi’s accountability system may indeed only rate a handful of school districts as D or F.  That says more about the inadequacies of the accountability system than it does about the quality of education. 

If public schools were doing so well, why are the number of kids enrolled in public schools in decline? If school choice is unnecessary because standards really are so excellent, as Nancy and co claim, why do they fear the consequences of giving parents more power? Finally forced to come out and say in public they’ve been whispering to lawmakers at the Capitol for years, the anti-school choice campaigners’ arguments don’t add up.  Exposed to scrutiny, the anti-school choice lobby has all the credibility of the Flat Earth Society. Actual parents across Mississippi, as opposed to campaigners claiming to speak for parents, know this.
 
At his excellent Policy Summit this week, House Speaker Jason White, shared with the 500+ attendees the results of his recent polling.  Not only was there massive support for tax reform, but the slide on school choice showed overwhelming support for parent power. 

73 percent of White voters and 65 percent of Black voters support allowing parents a more active role in choosing their children’s education.  84 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Independents agreed.  Here is an issue that Mississippi can unite behind.
 
Time may be up for those that have spent the past decade quietly killing off anything that looks like parent power in various legislative committees.  Actual parents aren’t on your side, and the anti-parent power lobby may be about to find that out. 

What’s the biggest challenge America faces? 

You might think it is $35 trillion of national debt?  Or maybe you imagine its uncontrolled immigration?  How about inflation, which is still stubbornly high? These are all really important problems, but they are not impossible to solve. If there is the political will, we could cut government spending dramatically to close the deficit. Who says we need to have all those federal agencies and welfare programs?

Immigration laws could actually be enforced if the federal government put its mind to it.  What do you think Japan does to illegal migrants who outstay their welcome? Inflation can be tamed.  Ronald Reagan showed this was possible back in the early 1980s.

What America cannot do is fix these problems if young Americans grow up thinking the worst about their country.

Over the past generation, the radical left has slowly marched through America’s institutions.  They have captured many colleges and classrooms, promoting an extreme intersectional ideology. Young Americans have been taught that their country is always in the wrong.  Instead of celebrating this country’s history, they have been invited to judge everyone and everything that happened by the standards of today. This has demoralized America, and is sapping the country’s confidence.

That is why the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, as part of a national movement to push back against the ‘woke’ tide, runs the Mississippi Leadership Academy. This two-part course aimed at high school students is the perfect antidote to ‘woke’ with courses on: 

•               The moral case for the free market. 

•               Ethical Leadership.

•               Opportunity and our state. 

•               How the legislative process works.

•               American Exceptionalism.

•               The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence. 

Previous speakers have included Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, State Auditor, Shad White and leading academics.  Our Academy is designed to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective change agents in our state. Those that take part have the opportunity to meet state leaders, and in previous years, a number of those that graduated went on the intern with state leaders.

Do you have children or grandchildren that would benefit from taking part?  Please forward this email to them with details on how to sign up below! The two-part course will take place at our Jackson offices on Saturday October 12th and Saturday November 9th, between 10am and 3pm.

Hurry to apply now before places fill up! 

Apply Here!

Education is the number one thing we need to improve in Mississippi.
That’s why MCPP just launched “Move Up, Mississippi”, a campaign aimed at changing our education system for the better.

Mississippi education is only going to improve if we accept the truth about how things really are:

Rather than getting better, the rate of chronic absenteeism in Mississippi schools has got worse.  
 
In 2022-23, over 100,000 students regularly skipped school, up from 70,000 in 2016-17.

So, what’s the solution?
 
What we need is school choice.  Mississippi is now surrounded by states that have school choice.  It is transforming education for the better.  Let’s not get left behind…..

School Choice would mean every family gets to decide where their share of the state education budget is spent.  It would mean that the values being taught in your child’s classroom would have to align with the values of Mississippi families.

To find out what school choice would mean for you and your family, visit moveupms.com

Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama have done more to improve education in 12 months than Mississippi has achieved in 12 years.  Sign up and join our movement if you believe it is time to change that!

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