By Rachel Canter When I was a first year teacher, I asked my students a basic question about American history—“Why do we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday every year?”—as a way of introducing Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Without exception, the answer I got from every class was that Dr. Martin…
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This fall, we surveyed all the Mississippi early learning collaboratives to get a clearer picture of the challenges and successes they experienced during the COVID crisis in the 2020-2021 school year. The information collected was published in our newest report titled, Resilience: Pandemic Impact on Early Learning Collaboratives (2020-2021). We gathered information in six key…
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We are celebrating #GivingTuesday and the end of the year by raising $10,000 for Mississippi kids. Money raised supports our dedicated staff in achieving high-quality pre-K-12 public education in Mississippi. These dollars directly enable us to produce research, resources, and policy recommendations for children, families, teachers, and schools. In the last decade, Mississippi has improved…
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Today, we are excited to release our policy vision, “The Future of Schools: Supporting Families, Teachers, and Students.” This publication details three ways that Mississippi First believes we can change with the times in order to better serve all of our students. Families: Align and Extend the School Day and School Year Juggling school and…
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This week, the Senate Education Committee hosted hearings on the teacher pay raise. We submitted public comment which included three strategies.
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Mississippi First releases a third 2021 pre-K research brief demonstrating the benefits of pre-K for children living in poverty. Since our founding, Mississippi First has known access to high-quality, no- and low-cost pre-K in Mississippi would be a game-changer for our youngest learners. In our first pre-K publication, 2012’s Leaving Last in Line, we recommended…
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We would love to imagine a world in which school districts never have to engage in crisis communications, but this past month, schools began re-opening for a new school year right as the Delta variant is surging in Mississippi. In some ways, we know just as little about how this school year will unfold as…
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