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Conservative activists like Annie Holmquist want us to believe Mississippi is doing a better job in education than Minnesota (“Worried about ICE’s impact on school funding? Let’s focus on education savings accounts instead,” Feb. 16).
A cursory glance at average ACT scores (Minnesota: 20.7; Mississippi: 17.7), SAT scores (Minnesota: 1215; Mississippi: 1197), eighth grade NAEP math rankings (Minnesota: No. 3; Mississippi: No. 35), or eighth grade NAEP reading scores (Minnesota: No. 14; Mississippi: No. 41) shows that their claim is dubious at best.
Where Mississippi does excel is specifically in fourth-grade reading scores. Part of this can be explained by Mississippi being an early adopter of the return to phonics and abandoning Lucy-Calkins-style reading curriculum. Gov. Tim Walz signed the READ Act in Minnesota in 2023, which mandates schools use research-based reading curriculum (i.e., phonics), but we were embarrassingly a few years behind Mississippi in recognizing the importance of the science of reading.
But a major reason for Mississippi’s high fourth-grade reading scores is often overlooked: That state’s fourth-graders are, on average, older than ours. In 2019, 9% of test takers in Mississippi had been held back prior to the fourth-grade test. It is true that Mississippi’s 11-year-olds read better than Minnesota’s 10-year-olds. But only four years later, our eighth-graders are blowing theirs out of the water in every testing area, despite our eighth-graders being younger on average than theirs.
Holmquist goes on to complain that Minnesota spends more per pupil than Mississippi, which is true but misleading. Payroll is the largest expense for any district, and Minnesota’s median housing price is nearly double that of Mississippi. Since employees in Minnesota need to be paid enough to afford housing, of course Minnesota’s educational spending will be higher than Mississippi’s.
And that’s before you consider special education expenses: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services found in 2021 that Minnesota met the requirements and purposes of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). Mississippi was listed in the “Needs Assistance (two or more consecutive years)” category. Yes, schools can save a lot of money by denying students with disabilities their legal right to a free and appropriate special education, but that doesn’t mean we should emulate Mississippi and save money by harming students with disabilities.
