School Funding

Passed by the Mississippi Legislature in 1997 (see history below), the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) is a law that provides a formula that is designed to ensure an adequate education for every Mississippi child — whether that child lives in a “wealthy” community or a “poor” one. It is designed to provide schools the […]

Calculating achievement growth of Mississippi students has been complicated in recent years by changes in assessments from year to year.  In 2015, Mississippi discontinued its use of PARCC assessments and developed the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP), which is aligned to the state’s college- and career-ready standards. The PARCC tests were widely criticized in Mississippi and in

The most critical point of Mississippi’s school funding revamp is getting a formula-driven base student cost that accurately reflects the amount required to provide at least an adequate education for a typical child for the current year and into the future, and that accounts for changes in the cost of education that are due to inflation or new demands placed

Measuring the performance of Mississippi students, and by extension, their schools and school districts, is a complex task. That task has been complicated in recent years by annual changes in assessments (MCT2, MCT3/PARCC, MAP), and a complete overhaul of academic standards (Mississippi’s standards now are more rigorous than two-thirds of all states). The Mississippi Department of Education

Mississippi Schools for the Blind and the Deaf are fully accredited elementary and secondary programs (K-12) designed to focus on the unique learning needs of children and youth with visual impairments or blindness and those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, including those who have additional disabilities. The Schools for the Blind and the Deaf do not receive

Prior to the Great Recession, 2008 was the high-water mark for state funding. That was also the last year that Mississippi’s public schools were fully funded according to state law through the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP).  Comparing FY2008 to FY2015 A comparison of the Fiscal Year 2015 (FY2015) state budget to the FY2008 budget casts

Significant improvement in national achievement rankings will be attained only when all Mississippi children have access to a broad selection of rigorous and rich course offerings, highly-effective, well-trained teachers, and reasonable class sizes that afford them the individualized instruction they require. Adequate funding is essential to this process. Below are some concrete examples of the

Despite being underfunded by more than $1.6-billion in the last six years, schools have seen their standards rise significantly and their administrative duties spike upward due to mandates by the State Legislature and policy requirements at the state and federal levels. Incredibly, as the Legislature has continued to pile on the administrative functions required of

Prior to the “Great Recession,” support among legislators for adequate school funding was strong. The Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) formula, passed into law in 1997 and phased in over a number of years, was fully funded for the first time in 2003. Four years later, bolstered by strong constituent support, Governor Haley Barbour, in

Our children’s education is, once again, at the bottom of the priority list for the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC). That committee has announced its budget recommendation for Fiscal Year 2015, the budget that will be debated in the 2014 Legislative Session. Despite an end-of-year budget surplus of $295-million and increases in state revenue for four