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This has been a good week for education reform in Mississippi.  Our lawmakers might not agree on much, but last Saturday, they finally voted to replace the old education funding formula with the new Mississippi Student Funding Formula. 

Under the old funding formula, your tax dollars were spent in the interests of the education bureaucrats.  Local administrators were guaranteed the same amount of revenue even when they lost students or underperformed. 

Mississippi will now fund students, not a system.  Every student will now get a base amount of $6,695, on top of which they will then receive additional amounts based on their own individual circumstances.

This is a major win for Speaker Jason White and Chairman of the House Education Committee, Rob Roberson, as well as for Jansen Owen and Kent McCarty.  The bill would not have passed without a strong lead from the Governor, Tate Reeves, as well. 

Now that Mississippi will personalize the amount of funding each student gets, the money might just start to follow the student.

Will this happen?  Thanks to a ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday, one of the key objections against it happening has been removed.

Lawmakers opposed to school choice in our state often suggest that while they personally might agree with school choice, sadly, you can’t put government money into private schools. 

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling shows this excuse to be bunkum.

During Covid, when large sums of federal money were provided to Mississippi, our state legislature, in turn, authorized a state agency to distribute some of those funds to private schools for infrastructure improvement.

This prompted an activist group, Parents for Public Schools, to challenge allocating public money to private schools as unconstitutional.  Had Parents for Public Schools been successful, we might have found ourselves in a situation now where public dollars could not follow a student into the private sector. 

Thursday’s ruling is a defeat not just for anti-school choice activists.  It means that those in the legislature looking for a ready-made excuse not to support school choice can no longer hide behind the claim that school choice is unconstitutional.

As our legal division, the Mississippi Justice Institute argued when we filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief, alongside the Institute for Justice, the Mississippi Constitution does not prevent school choice.

You might have noticed that despite there being a supposedly conservative majority in our state legislature, not a great deal of conservative legislation was passed this session.

A bill to tackle DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) dogma in our public universities was killed in committee.  Efforts to restore the Right of Initiative fizzled out, as did proposals to remove restrictive laws that intentionally limit the number of health care providers. 

Our lawmakers weren’t even prepared to pass a law that might have allowed Mississippians to buy wine online.  They only just managed to pass the SAFER Act to protect women’s rights at the eleventh hour. 

The forces of do-nothing intransigence are powerful.  But as the success of education funding reform shows, inertia can be overcome. 

When Speaker White played hardball and Governor Reeves gave a clear lead, the intransigent folded.  Maybe this is the way to achieve change? 

Mississippi desperately needs change.  Reformers need to be prepared to ruffle a few feathers in order to achieve it.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Imagine if all the restaurants in your neighborhood were guaranteed the same revenue even if they managed to serve fewer customers? 

That’s pretty much how Mississippi has been funding public education for the past thirty years, under the so-called Mississippi Adequate Education Funding Formula Program, or MAEP system.

Under MAEP, taxpayer dollars are allocated in a way that suited education administrators and local bureaucrats.  Under the so-called ‘hold harmless’ provisions of the MAEP, they did not need to worry about loss of revenue, even if they lost students and underperformed. 

Last week, the Mississippi legislature finally voted to replace the antiquated MAEP system, with the new Mississippi Student Funding Formula.  HB 4130 passed unanimously in the House, and before sailing through the Senate on a 49-3 vote.

Under the new Student Funding Formula, Mississippi will fund actual students, not a self-serving system.  What does this mean in practice?

Every student will now be allocated a base amount of $6,695.  On top of that base amount, a weighted system will be used to allocate additional funds to each student depending on their individual circumstances.

MAEP treated every child as if they were an identical accounting unit on a bureaucratic spreadsheet.  As every parent knows, each child is different and has different needs.  The new Student Funding Formula recognizes this fact.  Children with special needs, or particularly gifted students, get more, as do those from lower income neighborhoods. 

The new formula has a specific weighting for career and technical education, too, which could be important for future workforce development. 

Also important is the fact that those crony ‘hold harmless’ deals, which reward mediocrity, will be terminated in 2027. 

Early on in this session, Speaker Jason White made it clear that he was 100 percent committed to getting this new funding formula passed.  Both he, and the Chairman of the House Education Committee, Rob Roberson, who authored the bill, deserve enormous credit for getting it though the legislature.  Kudos, too, to Jansen Owen and Kent McCarty.

Frankly, this bill would not have passed without a strong lead from the Governor, Tate Reeves, as well.  He made it clear that he was 100 percent behind this reform, and repeatedly talked about the need to fund students, not a system.

HB 4130 is really important for the future of education reform.  Perhaps, though, there is an even greater significance in its passage through the legislature.

What happened last week shows that Mississippi has leaders that are willing to spend political capital achieving the kind of change our state needs.  Do-nothing intransigence is not so powerful after all. 

When reformers in our state work together, they win. 

Ever wondered why there has been so little progress towards school choice in Mississippi? 

In a recent radio interview, Mississippi state Senator David Blount was asked by Paul Gallo if he supported school choice.  Senator Blount, who is Vice Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, made it clear he was against school choice. 

Blount criticised “taking taxpayer money and giving it to private schools”. 

Except it seems as if Senator Blount might have sent his own kids to private school. 

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice campaigner, picked up on Senator Blount’s comments, tweeting that Senator Blount sent his own kids to private school. 

If true, it means that Senator Blount’s position is to deny to other families in Hinds County, the district he represents, the school choice opportunities he had. 

It’s never right to criticise a politician over where they send their child to school.  We should support the right of every parent to seek the best for their kids.  In fact, it is great when parents, including state Senators, have those opportunities.  But those opportunities should be available for everyone.

Senator Blount makes it sound as though tax dollars belong to school boards.  Tax dollars belong to the taxpayer.  Tax dollars are there to provide children with an education. 

Why not allow Mississippi families to allocate their portion of education tax dollars to a school that best meets their needs?  This is what now happens in a growing number of US states.  Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and – hopefully – Louisiana now all allow families to allocate their share to state education tax dollars to a school of their choice.

The idea that tax dollars must only be spent on public education providers is nonsense.  Public dollars get spent at private institutions when it comes to Head Start, Pell grants, and social security.  If we adopted Senator Blount’s logic, we would force low-income families to spend their food stamps at government grocery stores. 

Now are you starting to see why Mississippi has made so little progress towards school choice?

In a rock solidly conservative state, we somehow manage to end up with a Vice Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, David Blount, adamantly against school choice.  Why?  How does someone so opposed to the conservative position on education get appointed to that position? 

Seeing how Senator Blount responded to Corey, it strikes that perhaps those opposed to school choice just aren’t that accustomed to having to defend their opposition to change. They should get accustomed.  

Momentum for school choice in our state is only going to grow.  Mississippi will soon be surrounded by states that allow families control over their education tax dollars.  School choice is THE flagship policy that unites every wing of the conservative movement.

In this exchange between Senator Blount and Corey DeAngelis, we see the battle lines of the future being drawn.  In the coming months, it will take a very brave, or very foolish, lawmaker to oppose school choice if it turns out that they themselves sent their kids to private school.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

This week, it emerged that the newly appointed head of America’s NPR (National   Public Radio) hates the US Constitution.  Speaking in 2021, she described the First Amendment which safeguards free speech as “a challenge.”

How could it be that the head of America’s public broadcasting service, established by an act of Congress, has such contempt for the US Constitution?

In her previous role running Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, Katherine Maher rejected a “free and open internet” as a guiding principle.  Such principles are, in her words, a “white male Westernized construct,” according to reports.

Katherine Maher, reports say, support efforts to censor opinions that do not conform with her leftist world view.  She spoke of the truth as being “a distraction”.

Sadly, Katherine Maher is not a one off.  She is fairly typical of the sort of people now running many of America’s institutions, HR departments, government agencies and universities. 

Ms Maher’s social media posts might read like parody.  There is nothing funny about the way that people with Ms Maher’s outlook and opinions are subverting America’s Founding principles, and replacing them with a grim leftist dogma that risks destroying American and the West.

Conservatives need to push back, but how?

Until now, many conservatives have been better at identifying the problem than at tackling it.

To defeat DEI, we need to pass laws, reform institutions, appoint the right people and set the right incentives.  Most of all, however, we need to counter bad ideas with good ideas.

States can take a lead in the fight back.  Here in Mississippi, for example, there was a successful campaign two years ago for a bill to combat Critical Race Theory.  The new law goes some way to addressing the issue, but not far enough. 

If we are serious about restricting DEI dogma, we need to ensure that your tax dollars cannot be spent promoting this divisive ideology.

Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, has shown that states can take the lead against DEI, signing an Executive Order, restricting the use of public money for DEI programs.  State leaders in Oklahoma, Utah and Texas have also done something similar.  We need to see similar action here in Mississippi.

Did you know that many public universities use your tax dollars to promote Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs?

One of our leading public universities here in Mississippi has an “institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion plan” governing every aspect of campus life.  DEI shapes not only university admissions, administration and faculty hiring, but what young people are taught, with the development of an academic equity scorecard. 

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  That is why conservatives need to expose how many of your tax dollars are being spent to DEI programs. 

Instead of more DEI hires, the University of Florida recently decided to eliminate all DEI employee positions.  Last month, the University of Texas at Austin fired dozens of employees who used to work in diversity, equity and inclusion programs.  Every state should aim for something similar.

The best way to defeat bad ideas is with good ideas.  Teaching young people the following truths about America will give them immunity against the ‘woke’ mind virus. 

This is a fight that we can win.  One day we will look back and think it absurd that someone with Katherine Maher’s outlook could be put in charge of producing public service broadcasting content.  But there is a great deal that we need to do right now in order to get there!

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Mississippi is now entirely surrounded by states that have either passed, or are in the process of passing, laws that will give every family school choice.  A proposal to do something similar in our state never even made it to a full vote in the legislature.

How odd that there has been so little progress towards school choice in such a solidly conservative state.  School choice, surely, is the one policy that unites every wing of the conservative movement across America more than any other. 

School choice appeals as much to blue collar Trump conservatives as it does to the conservatives of the country clubs.  Donald Trump has spoken passionately in defense of universal school choice.  His Education Secretary, Betsy De Vos, has fought heroically – both in office and afterwards - for school choice. 

Universal school choice has universal appeal for conservatives – except it seems in Mississippi.

Even more odd, perhaps, is that it is not only school choice that has failed to advance in the Mississippi state legislature in 2024.  A whole raft of solid conservative measures have failed to advance during this session.

Two months ago, there were high hopes that the legislature give back to voters the right of initiative.  The measure died in the Senate. 

Most conservative, you might think, would oppose the DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) agenda that has run rampant across US university campuses.  A modest bill was put forward to prevent your tax dollars funding DEI programs at our public universities.  The measure was killed off in committee.

At the start of the session many leading lawmakers agreed that something needed to be done to deal with the mismanagement of Mississippi’s Public Employee’s Retirement System (PERS).  A modest proposal to change the way PERS was overseen was shot down in the Senate.

Most people accept that healthcare in Mississippi is not as good as it needs to be.  HB419, which could have removed some of the intentionally restrictive red tape that limits the number of healthcare providers able to treat patients.  The measure was killed off. 

At some point, I put it to you, the voters might start to notice.  It is not long term sustainable to have voters repeatedly vote conservative but to get so little conservative policy in return.

The US South is flourishing.  For decades now, there has been what you might call the Southern Success Story.  Texas, North Carolina and Florida have taken off.  Tennessee, Alabama and even Arkansas are seeing strong, sustained growth, too.  Why not Mississippi?

To be fair, we are starting to see signs of the kind of growth we need.  Our Governor has helped attract so much inward investment there is a danger we grow blasé about yet another billion dollar announcements.  It seems that there are now more people moving to Mississippi than leaving.  Every time I visit Hattiesburg, Laurel, Starkville, Oxford or the Coast, I see evidence of growth all around. 

Nor is there anything pre-ordained about Mississippi being ranked 50th out of 50 states.  It is a choice if we do not do more to emulate the kinds of reforms that have helped transform other southern states for the better.

If a conservative were to run for office today against tax cuts, they’d be unlikely to get very far.  It wasn’t always that way until people like Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform helped make being a conservative synonymous with wanting lower taxes.

We need to do something similar when it comes to school choice.  We need to make it unthinkable to run as a conservative unless you favor universal education freedom accounts.

The good news is that this beginning to happen.  In Texas, for example, a few weeks ago, almost all anti-school choice conservatives lost out in their primary elections.  It would be impossible that anyone could run as a conservative in that state to be Governor or Lieutenant Governor without being unequivocally in favor of universal school choice. 

Why stop with school choice?  I doubt it will be possible to run as a conservative unless you oppose spending tax dollars on divisive DEI or favor giving citizens back their right of initiative either. 

The University of Florida just fired all their DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) staff.  The University closed the office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and terminated DEI-focused contracts. 
 
Florida is not alone in taking decisive action against the ‘woke’ mind virus that has been running rampant on US college campuses for years.  In Alabama, a bill (SB 129) to ban DEI programs in all state institutions, including colleges, was recently voted through the state legislature.  The University of Arkansas has decided to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion division. 
 
Here in Mississippi, meanwhile, crickets…...  No executive orders.  No legislation.   Why? 
 
Senator Angela Hill presented a bill to eliminate DEI programs in any state-funded institution (SB2402).  So, too, did Representative Becky Currie in the House (HB127).  Yet both bills died in committee.

Saying that the bills “died in committee” makes it sound like they were victims of some freak accident.  Neither bill, of course, was struck by lightning or afflicted by some random misfortune.  The bills failed to come out of committee because those that chaired the relevant committees to which each bill had been referred decided not to allow the bills to proceed. 

In the Senate, the two committees in question were Accountability, Efficiency & Transparency, and Universities, chaired by Sen David Parker and Sen Nicole Boyd respectively.  I doubt that Parker or Boyd would have killed the anti DEI bill without approval from Senate leader, Delbert Hosemann. 

In the House, the committee out of which the bill failed to emerge is chaired by Rep Donnie Scoggin. 

“But is an anti DEI bill actually necessary?”, I hear you ask.  “Is there really that much DEI here in Mississippi in the first place?”   
  
If any member of the legislature spent more than a couple of minutes browsing the University of Mississippi’s website, they would see that it is an institution run by people 100 percent committed to DEI.  Do those lawmakers that killed the anti DEI bill approve? 
 
DEI dogma not only influences the way Ole Miss is run.  DEI seeks to shape what young people are taught there.  Ole Miss’s “Equity in Action” plans, for example, increasingly touch upon almost every aspect of university life.  

Concealed behind innocuous jargon in the university’s “Pathways to Equity” strategic plan, Ole Miss has an active DEI program that impacts everything from teaching practices, course content and student evaluation.  The way I read it, Ole Miss even seems to endorse the hiring of some faculty on the basis of race, rather than merit. 
 
Without any action from the state Senate or the IHL, this is all being done on your tax dollar.  We know this thanks to Shad White, our State Auditor. 
 
Shad White is one of the few leaders to actually show leadership on this issue, and he has tried to calculate how much all this is costing Mississippi taxpayers.
 
White’s recent report showed that Mississippi universities spent over $23 million on DEI from July 2019 to June 2023.  Nearly $11 million of state taxpayer funds went to DEI programs, most of which was spent on salaries for DEI employees.  Without any action from our state leaders, DEI spending soared almost 50 percent since 2019.  

In case anyone needs reminding why DEI needs to be rooted out of our public universities, here’s a quick reminder.
 
The United States is founded on the revolutionary idea that all Americans are created equal.  America might have produced some laws and leaders that failed to live up to that high standard.  But as a principle, it has never been bettered.
 
DEI overturns America’s founding principle, promoting instead the idea that each of us is defined by our immutable characteristics.  This is not just profoundly un-American.  DEI ideology takes us back to a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment idea that we are defined by what we are born.  It is a profoundly anti-Western ideology.  

It is not a coincidence that the ‘woke’ mobs that appeared on Ivy League college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks last October seemed to side with America’s enemies.  DEI proponents are hostile to America and the West.
 
DEI demoralizes Americans.  It teaches the young to believe that their country is always in the wrong.  It demands that history be rewritten to press the past into a narrative of exploitation. 
 
How regrettable that conservative leaders in this conservative state should do so little about it while leaders in states all around us take action.

Conservatives have a massive majority in the Mississippi state legislature.  Are they about to deliver real conservative policy?  Or will we see the implementation of a soft-left, progressive-but-slower agenda to expand government?

When it comes to education, a blizzard of bills has just appeared which suggest that we might actually see something authentically conservative soon. 

The Mississippi Student Freedom bill (HB 1449) is the most exciting piece of legislation I have seen in the House in three years. 

It would give families the right to have their child’s share of state education tax dollars paid into their child’s own Magnolia Scholarship Account.  Each family would then be free to allocate that money to meet their child’s needs.

Think how transformative it would be if every mom and dad were allocated $8,000 - $10,000 tax dollars to spend on their child’s education, be it public, private, charter school or home school? 

The Mississippi Student Freedom bill would establish a system of school choice similar to what Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has implemented over in Arkansas.   Eligibility would be phased in over time, but the end goal would be to allow universal school choice. 

“But what if lots of students from failing school districts tried to move to successful school districts?” some will ask.

The bill anticipates precisely this concern.  School districts will not be compelled to take kids from out of area if schools in those districts are already full. 

Unsurprisingly, various vested interests that currently get to spend your education tax dollars are bitterly opposed to allowing families to have control.  No prizes for guessing why.  Turkeys might not vote for Christmas, but that does not stop Christmas from happening. 

A second bill in the House, the Opportunity Scholarships bill (HB 1452) proposes a similar system of school choice, but one that would only be available for those in failing school districts.  Good, if not quite excellent. 

Then there is the INSPIRE bill (HB 1453), which offers a complete overhaul of our antiquated school funding system.  

Mississippi's current school funding formula, the MAEP, was created in 1997.  MAEP stands for Mississippi Adequate Education Program Funding, but it has proved to be anything but adequate.

The MAEP funding system is Soviet in its complexity.  Over the past quarter century, it has proved pretty useless at getting your tax dollars where they are supposed to go: the classroom.  We ought instead to have a formula that funds students, not a system. 

This is precisely what the INSPIRE bill would do.  Every child in Mississippi would get an amount weighted to reflect their own needs. 

For years, policy makers have talked (and talked) about change.  Now, there is a plan to make it happen.

What is so significant about all these bills is that they have been sponsored by the House’s new education committee chairman, Rep. Rob Roberson.  He has made a remarkable start in the role. 


It is clear, too, that Speaker Jason White is also a driving force behind these excellent reforms.  If he is successful, Mr. White will transform our state’s education system for the better.  Every family in the state should rally behind him.  Indeed, every Mississippian who wants to see our state doing better should be with him 100%. 

Mississippi is now surrounded on every side by school choice states that have either implemented or are implementing these kinds of changes.  Here is our chance to be a leader, not a laggard. 

Mississippi voters have elected an overwhelmingly conservative legislature.  It ought to be possible for them to make these mainstream conservative policies happen.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Mississippi's current school funding formula, the MAEP, was created in 1997. However, a generation later, it's time for a fundamental overhaul of the way we fund education. The MAEP is hideously clunky and complicated, and few even understand it. We need a transparent and easily understood system that is tailored to meet individual student needs. 

An individualized funding system means weighting the amount that every student gets above a base amount, depending on every child’s circumstances. For example, the amount ought to be adjusted to reflect the fact that a child might have special needs or be especially gifted. There needs to be some weighting for low income and concentrated poverty, perhaps, and some career and technical weighting would also help prepare young Mississippians for the workforce.

Tennessee recently showed how a weighted system can work, and now Rep. Rob Roberson’s excellent new INSPIRE bill (HB 1453, “Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education) proposes an alternative to the MAEP, rather than just some amendments to it. By adjusting the different weights for the formula, it is now perfectly possible to implement a new system in which every district is a winner, as well as the students. 

Mississippi needs a new funding formula, not just a band-aid on a system that is long past its sell-by date. Last year, Mississippi’s Senate voted by a clear majority to replace the MAEP, and now there's a clearly thought-through alternative to it. Let's start over with a formula that people believe in and will fund. 

Last year, Mississippi Republicans won an overwhelming majority.  Could 2024 be the year when they use that majority to deliver the kind of big, strategic change our state desperately needs? 
 
Here are a number of reforms that Mississippi conservatives have it in their gift to implement, which would transform the long term prospects of our state for the better.

  1. Education Freedom: 

2024 could be the year that we give every family in the state control over their child’s share of education tax dollars, through an Education Freedom Account.  Arkansas passed legislation to do precisely that last year.  Tennessee and Louisiana are poised to do something similar.  Rather than trailing behind, Mississippi lawmakers should take the lead, delivering big, strategic change to improve education in this state, too.   

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy recently held a public rally for education freedom, with Corey DeAngelis and local educators, helping mainstream the idea.  Recent polls now show overwhelming public support.  

Too many families in Mississippi cannot get health coverage.  Rather than hosing federal dollars at the problem, we need to look at what states like Florida are doing to innovate, with alternatives to insurance-based healthcare.  This means ending the restrictive Certificate of Need laws that prevent new low cost health care providers from operating.  It also means allowing nurse practitioners more autonomy.  The Mississippi Center for Public Policy will soon publish a roadmap on how to go about removing CON laws.   

In 2023 Mississippi had a large state budget surplus.  Rather than wait for politicians to think up new ways to spend that surplus, we need to see tax cuts in 2024.  One option would be a further reduction in the state income tax.  

Our neighboring states are reducing the tax burden on families and businesses.  If we want to reverse the population decline in our state, we need to do so too.

In recent months we have seem appalling behaviour by ‘woke’ academics at several leading universities.  It is now clear that DEI is destroying American academia.  So why are public universities in Mississippi still running DEI programs?  The Governor of Oklahoma recently issued an order terminating funding for DEI programs in public universities in that state.  Mississippi needs to stop the rot in public universities and end DEI programs in 2024.

While those are our top four priorities for 2024, here are some other things we would like to see our law makers deliver:

If Mississippi conservatives passed these eight or so laws, they would transform our state for the better.  No longer would we be considered a laggard by some, but as a leader.  

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