re: More detail on the Mississippi Education Rising - black students in MS= 3rd in nation

My wife is a teacher, here's a primer at how the merit based teacher pay works.

1. There is a state scale for teacher pay, based on years of experience and highest degree level achieved. This is for everyone. Mississippi has raised the minimum pay from $34,000 to $45,000 in the past five years.

2. There is a local supplement for teachers, which ranges from $0 in poor rural districts to thousands in rich districts like Madison, Oxford, Ocean Springs.

2b. In areas where there is an extreme shortage, the state provides an additional supplement.

3. The merit pay system works like this. If a school district is rated as an A, the district receives $80* per student additionally that is divided amongst instructional staff (no admins) only.

Ocean Springs has 423 teachers and 5,861 students. The district receives an additional $469,000 for teacher pay, which is paid as a ~$1100 bonus every December.

According to the Open Books app, there are many 10-year+ teachers in wealthier, A-rated school districts clearing $75k+ in a state where the average household income is under $43,000.

The biggest lie the Democrats ever told was that teachers get paid peanuts. You can do fairly well. But that lie has kept many good people from going into education, so they get a lot of trash in education.


* - I believe its in the $80 range.

quote:

---

Do you think other states don't hold children back?

---

Considering that 41 percent of Baltimore City schools have 41% of students with a 1.0 or lower GPA…. I would say it isnt a common practice in some places.

How about where 0.13 is middle of the class…. They holding anyone back?

quote:

---

How are they pulling that feat off?

Easily.

---

It's a national test, administered to nationally selected samples, then scored via national review. Are you saying that statewide cheating is occuring at the Mississippi testing centers?

quote:

---

Ocean Springs.

---

OS isn't even the rich district on the Coast. That title belongs to Biloxi and Pascagoula/Gautier

quote:

---

I think your reading comprehension may need some work.

---

You'd be painfully mistaken in that "thought."

You claim the MS educational performance numbers don't reflect reality. I've asked you several times now to specifically delineate how MS is gaming the system to generate those supposedly false numbers. Your responses are sophomoric evasions.

It is not even evident, aside from the LBPA, that you have the foggiest clue as to the efforts MS has in place.

Is this legit? I have a hard time believing Mississippi was truly able to make these improvements.

quote:

---

quote:
Damn you took the truth pretty personal here.


Nah. Just responding to stupid as stupid should be responded to.

Good morning.

---

Dude. Lived in Mississippi a long time, still have friends there with kids who have had to go to public school and the stories I have heard are incredible. I'm skeptical of these improvements, to say the least.

quote:

---

quote:
They started faking test results.
quote:
LSUconvert
Hattiesburg, MS
Do tell.
How are they pulling that feat off?

---

You aren't aware that cheating on test results in school districts all over the country has been exposed many times in recent years. The No Child Left Behind initiative saw a shite ton of shenanigans and inflated scores etc.

What is in fact an impressive achievement by Mississippi that should be lauded for its results and apparent innovation is sadly but not unexpectedly met with skepticism instead of it simply being taken at face value that the test results are in fact legit.

Mississippi and to only a very tiny lesser degree Alabama have the double whammy of being relatively poor (by U.S. standards) and are both governed by Republican super majorities so are natural whipping boys nationally among both the elite crowd as well as regular everyday Americans that like to look down their noses at both states.

Mississippi in particular isn't going to get the credit for this it richly deserves because the liberal media and liberal federal government establishment would have to admit that either Mississippi is fudging the numbers or Mississippi's Republican led education policies are producing impressive results. Can't have that so it will either be ignored or attributed to some made up Biden policy while liberals and the liberal media try to gaslight the public with strawmen arguments about Jackson's recent water/sewer crisis happening in a "red state"

Louisiana might get a small shout out for it's test scores due to having a Democrat governor though

Curriculum matters.

One of the largest drivers of test scores, both positively and negatively is simply literacy.

Teach kids to read and kids perform better on tests.. It is the simplest fix to our education system.

Literacy is equity. Not pictures of Black people in books or teaching about systemic oppression.