Mississippi

Southern states are doing a particularly unfair job providing their students with educational resources and opportunities. A recent report from the Education Law Center, "Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card," provides statistics and analysis of the fairness of school funding formulas for every state. The Institute for Southern Studies has examined the data further and says that Southern states have some serious work to do in order to ensure every student has a fair opportunity to learn. 

Higher graduation rates typically correlate to lower incarceration rates. Why then do states with higher graduation rates for students of color also witness higher rates of incarceration for the same population? Because our criminal justice system, and the school-to-prison pipeline, disproportionately affects students of color. 

Far too many states continue to deny public schools the essential resources they need to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. The Second Edition of Education Law Center's Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card rates the 50 states on the basis of four "fairness indicators" - funding level, funding distribution, state fiscal effort, and public school coverage - and provides the most in-depth analysis to date of state education finance systems.

Severing the link between school finance and local property taxes would help to eliminate the funding inequities that plague our schools and that deprive low-income students of the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. In the Sunday Dialogue section in the New York Times, Dr. John H. Jackson, President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, argues for a more just method for funding our nation's schools.

No matter how many state NCLB waivers the U.S. grants, we won't succeed in providing every student with an opportunity to learn until we address the inequities at the heart of our education system. In a powerful op-ed in the Jackson Free Press, Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP and president of One Voice Mississippi, writes that "forcing states to implement more of the same reforms to avoid penalty makes little sense, especially considering the magnitude of problems in our education system. Without an emphasis on inputs and resource allocation, inequalities in education opportunity and attainment will persist."

Thanks to a lawsuit settlement reached between Southern Poverty Law Center and the public schools district of Jackson, MS, students will no longer be subjected to a brutal discipline policy that included handcuffing students to railings and poles for hours on end as punishment for offenses as minor as dress code violations. 

If it takes a village to raise a child, the same village must share accountability when many children are educationally abandoned. In New York City, the nation’s largest school system, on average student outcomes and their opportunity to learn are more determined by the neighborhood where a child lives, than his or her abilities.

New Study: It costs almost $11,000 more per year to live near high-quality schools than low-quality schools. This "housing cost gap," which is the result of exclusionary zoning policies, means that low-income students are less likely to attend good schools, thereby denying them access to the educational opportunities they need to succeed and escape poverty.