Excel National’s plan for student-centered education reform across the country includes:
- Pursuing policies that improve student learning and expand educational choice;
- Actively identifying and supporting education reform champions in governors’ offices, state legislatures and state departments of education;
- Protecting reforms already in place from the special interest’s continuous attacks to return to the status quo, and
- Shaping the public debate on education reform and motivating others to take action.
The Mississippi Legislature met from January 6 to April 2, 2015 and Excel National employed the above strategies to advance reform policies and legislation. Mississippi policymakers boldly empowered parents with the passage of Education Scholarship Account (“ESA”) legislation, while holding the line on attempts by defenders of the status quo to peel back the state’s accountability systems. Excel National is grateful for partners like Governor Phil Bryant, Lt. Governor Tate Reeves, Senator Gray Tollison, numerous other legislators, Empower Mississippi, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Mississippi First, the American Federation for Children and several parents who all worked tirelessly on behalf of Mississippi’s students.
Education Scholarship Accounts
- On April 16, Governor Bryant signed the Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Act, SB 2695, sponsored by Senator Nancy Collins and Representative Carolyn Crawford. The new law allows parents to create a customized education for their children with special needs. Mississippi became just the third state in the nation to authorize ESAs.
Standards and Accountability
- During Mississippi’s 2015 Session, the Legislature considered several bills regarding all aspects of standards and accountability. Ultimately, the Mississippi Legislature took great care to remove what would have been significantly negative impacts to the state’s A-F School Grading and K-3 Reading policies that were included in numerous bills. The Legislature further did well to defeat proposals that would have created negative impacts to graduation requirements for students with special needs and students in career and technical education programs.
- Most notably, policymakers rejected a push to dilute the state’s comprehensive K-3 Reading policy, a policy that blends early identification, teacher training and supports, interventions for struggling readers, parent notification and retention as a last resort. Lawmakers held firm on the retention as a last resort component, because every piece of the policy is necessary to ensure that K-3 students are reading proficiently to succeed from fourth grade through graduation.