Policy Update: Mississippi: Keeping Their Promise

Vital Statistics
153	Public school districts
876	Public schools
505,000	K-12 enrollment
52.3%	Minority students
32%	Children in poverty
13.2%	Students with disabilities
$2.1 billion	Annual K-12 expenditures (all revenue sources)

The 1997 Adequate Education Act not only called for increased state spending, but also changed the way the state subsidizes its schools. The legislation requires state officials to identify the minimum amount of per-pupil funding needed to provide an "adequate" education, based on how much the "average" district receiving acceptable ratings under the state accountability system spends.

The law requires most districts to levy property taxes sufficient to raise 27 percent of the "foundation" amount, while property-poor districts must levy a minimum tax rate. Districts are eventually supposed to receive at least enough state aid to make up the difference between the minimum set by the state and the amount they receive from local taxes. The legislature added $12 million to a $1.25 state billion education budget in 1997 and $14 million last year. time the law is fully funded in 2003, annual spending under the act is to rise to $130.8 million.

"I commend them for keeping the funding mechanism intact, because they had a lot of incentive to tamper with it, [from] a lot of critics who said the state couldn't afford it," says Michael Marks, the president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, a National Education Association affiliate.

The money is distributed based on enrollment, but districts also receive 5 percent more state aid for each at-risk student poor enough to qualify for subsidized school meals.

For the first six years, the new money is earmarked for school construction, although up to 20 percent may be spent on educational technology.

Judy Rhodes, the director of educational accountability in the state education department, says about 135 of Mississippi's 153 districts took advantage of a provision of the law that allows them to use the money to secure long-term financing for capital improvements.

Poor, rural districts are also the beneficiaries of the 1998 Critical Teacher Shortages Act, which is intended to encourage teachers to work in such areas, as well as spur more young Mississippians to pursue teaching as a career.

The law promises a full scholarship to a Mississippi college or university to any prospective teacher willing to make a commitment to teach in an area the state education department designates as a "critical shortage area."

In addition, any teacher who is working in one of those areas, or is willing to relocate, can pursue a graduate degree at state expense.

The state will also pay $1,000 in relocation expenses, and it will offer loans to students at Mississippi colleges who agree to teach anywhere in the state.

For now, the designation goes only to the Mississippi Delta, the fertile but impoverished agricultural region in the northwestern part of the state. One of the poorest areas of the United States, it is also the location of many of the state's lowest-performing schools.

The initiative follows a 1997 law that called for raising teacher salaries 10 percent over three years.

The law also allowed experienced teachers from out of state to obtain licenses without taking the standardized tests required of new teachers and permitted paraprofessional aides to complete student-teaching requirements without quitting their jobs.

Moreover, the law made emergency teaching certificates nonrenewable, though it lengthened their lifespan from one to three years.

The 1998 teacher-shortage law is a recognition that those measures weren't enough to help distressed areas, says Marks, the union president.

"This has been a living hell for several years in my state," he says. "There was one school that opened 41 teachers short last year. The babies were being served by substitutes and anyone they could drag in off the street."

In addition to the other recruitment tools, the teacher-shortage law authorizes $6,000 housing loans for teachers in shortage areas and an unusual experiment in West Tallahatchie: The state will lend a developer $200,000 at a low interest rate to build rental housing for teachers.

The teacher shortage also hurts poorer districts' showing under the state accountability system, says Reggie Barnes, the superintendent of the West Tallahatchee district.

The state system ranks districts on a scale of 1 to 5 based both on achievement standards--most of them measured by norm-referenced tests, which compare students with others nationally--and on so-called process standards that measure school services. Districts that struggle just to put an adult in each classroom don't have much chance to meet standards related to the percentage of certified or in-field teachers, Barnes says.

But even the districts that score highest on the state's principal assessment tool--the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills--do not reach beyond the 60th percentile, compared with national norms.

Rhodes, the accountability director, says that state schools Superintendent Richard L. Thompson, who took office in April of last year, wants to re-examine the system in ways that might please educators in some of the struggling schools. "There's ample research showing that socioeconomics predicts test scores," Rhodes says. "What it doesn't do is predict improvement."

Thompson, she says, is weighing possible changes to the way in which the state measures districts.

He is interested in judging them based on how much they improve, rather than against the performance of other districts in the state, as the current system does.

It's not clear whether state leaders will also consider giving the accountability system more teeth.

The state turned over management of two chronically low-performing districts to appointed "conservators" in 1997.

But there are few consequences for districts that don't rate such drastic action, and Rhodes says no further state takeovers are imminent.

"These are districts that have for a number of years had very low academic performance," she says of the two districts that were targeted. "We felt we really didn't have any choice. I don't think anyone else is close to that at this point."

Low-performing districts are required to draft corrective-action plans and are singled out for technical assistance from the state education agency.

The legislature added $300,000 to that technical-assistance effort last year as part of a reading initiative that requires the state and every district to draft a plan to improve reading performance. The law launching the reading initiative also gives districts blanket authority to implement programs not specifically authorized in state law, in particular, extended day care and preschools.

And following through on a law passed in 1997, a single charter school opened last fall. The law allows the state school board to approve the conversion of as many as six public schools to charter status with the blessing of the local school board and the local teachers' union.