About Mississippi First Mississippi First was founded in 2008 by Rachel Canter and her childhood friend, Sanford Johnson. Driven to change the fact that Mississippi has historically been last, our founders set a bold vision: a Mississippi first in education nationally. Mississippi First is a non-partisan, nonprofit, education policy organization. We champion transformative policy solutions,…
Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on third grade literacy achievement. You can find the first part here. *** By Grace Breazeale I K-12 Policy Associate In the first part of this series, we explored the effectiveness of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) across Mississippi school districts, as well as trends…
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part series on the Literacy Based Promotion Act. *** By Grace Breazeale I K-12 Policy Associate Between 2013 and 2019, fourth grade reading scores on the nationwide NAEP test increased by ten points in Mississippi–a larger increase than in any other state during this time period. In…
The 2024 legislative session will run from January 2, until May 5. All general bills and constitutional amendments must be introduced by February 19 and have to be out of committee by March 5. To see details about bills introduced this session and track their progress, check out our tracker below. Throughout the session, we…
By Toren Ballard I Director of K-12 Policy For the second year in a row, results from the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) exams suggest that Mississippi is continuing to defy nationwide trends in educational achievement: proficiency levels across all subjects were at all-time highs in 2023, and Mississippi is now one of just two states…
