Senate Bill 2305 Pending before the Senate is Senate Bill 2305, which would create a loan repayment program for new Mississippi teachers known as the “William F. Winter and Jack Reed, Sr., Teacher Loan Repayment Program.” The Winter-Reed Loan Repayment Program would incentivize recent college graduates to teach in Mississippi, particularly in a critical shortage…
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Jackson, MS—Today, Mississippi First released their newest report titled Nothing in the Pipes: Educator Crisis in Mississippi. In recent years, a new problem in a decades-old challenge has emerged: the number of new Mississippi teachers has sharply declined, exacerbating the teacher shortage and threatening the success of public education in Mississippi. This new report discusses…
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The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE), in partnership with Mississippi First, has launched a new website for Mississippi teachers to increase teacher access to high-quality instructional materials. The site, Mississippi Instructional Materials Matter, offers a centralized location for Mississippi math and social studies teachers to review high-quality, standards-aligned materials that have been evaluated and adopted…
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PLEASE NOTE: This is an informational blog post about actions taken by the State Board of Education. It does not describe a special program run by Mississippi First. We do not have any authority over licensure nor are we running an educator preparation program or a Praxis program. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak in…
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This post is the last in our three-part series on cut scores. Read Part 1 (A-F system) and Part 2 (Setting Cut Scores) before this if you need more background knowledge to understand this post. Proposals for Changing the Cut Scores There have been three proposals for how to change cut scores: MDE’s original recommendation,…
Read MoreThis blog post is Part 2. Read Part 1 here: https://www.mississippifirst.org/blog/understanding-re-setting-cut-scores-mississippis-accountability-system-part-1/. Setting Cut Scores The process of setting cut scores is in part technical and in part political. First, staff at the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) compile all the scores from schools and districts and rank each from highest to lowest. (Schools must be grouped…
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