Tag Archives: Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves

Making Schools Work

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On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about what has happened in the Mississippi schools since 2013, when they were ranked the second-worst state in fourth-grade reading to first in the country in 2024.

The article reports:

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves detailed how conservative education reform led his state’s school system to achieve some of the best outcomes in the country, a phenomenon dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller.

The Associated Press in 2023 referred to the state’s skyrocketing test scores for fourth graders as the “Mississippi Miracle,” explaining, “Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022.”

An updated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card from 2024 shows Mississippi leading the nation in demographic-adjusted 4th- and 8th-grade scores and it went viral on social media.

…Reeves credits getting “back to the basics” for his state’s soaring educational outcomes. In 2013, while Reeves was serving as lieutenant governor, Mississippi passed sweeping education reform legislation, including the “Third Grade Reading Gate,” mandating that schools hold back children who don’t meet certain reading standards before the end of third grade. The state reintroduced phonics — teaching students to sound out words — in its reading education and spent $15 million a year on reading coaches.

The percentage of students who both failed the test and were held back from advancing to the third grade decreased from 9% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023.

“The other side went crazy … they said, ‘well, we’re going to have to hold back half of our students,’” Reeves recalled. “No, we raised the level of expectations and Mississippians did what Mississippians do — they rose up and they met those increased expectations.”

The article concludes:

“By the way, our high school graduation rates during this time have risen from 72% of our kids graduated from high school to, last year, 89.9% of our kids are graduating high school,” Reeves added.

In addition to the new testing requirements, Mississippi also added new charter schools, created an Educational Savings Account (ESA) program for parents of children with disabilities so they can put their children in programs designed to meet their needs, and followed Florida in providing letter grade ratings for public schools.

“It’s really not a miracle at all,” the governor asserted. “It’s really a result of conservative reforms implemented in public education — they’re making a huge difference for kids.”

We need this in North Carolina.

Controlling The Vocabulary To Control The Narrative

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article that illustrates how words can be misused to create a false narrative.

The article reports:

NBC’s Chuck Todd pressed Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves (R) to accept vaccine mandates as “pro-life” actions, while simultaneously suggesting that access to abortion should be protected as an individual liberty.

Reeves made an appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press,” joining Todd for a discussion on the emergence of a new coronavirus variant and Mississippi’s vaccination rate as well as the 15-week abortion ban that will face the scrutiny of the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

Governor Reeves pointed out that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents states from limited abortion.

The article also includes some of the Governor’s comments on vaccine mandates:

Todd then attempted to use Reeves’ own comments about his opposition to vaccine mandates to argue that a vaccine mandate was actually a “pro-life” position.

“This is a power grab by the federal government. We’ve seen this time and time again by the Biden administration, and now we’re seeing their strong desire to trying to make decisions on behalf of individual Americans. We believe in freedom and individual liberty,” Reeves said of the vaccine mandates.

“‘Freedom and individual liberty,’” Todd repeated. “Why should the state of Mississippi tell a woman what they should do with their body? Why shouldn’t they have that individual freedom on their body, particularly in the first 20 weeks?”

“Well, this is a prime example, and the far left loves to scream, ‘My body, my choice.’ What I would submit to you, choice, is they absolutely ignore the fact that in getting an abortion there is an actual killing of an innocent unborn child that is in that womb,” Reeves replied. “Here is what we know about babies that are 15 weeks. We know that they have a heartbeat. We know that those babies at 15 weeks actually can open and close their hands. We know that they have developing lungs, and we know that those babies at 15 weeks can feel pain, and so when you talk – the difference between vaccine mandates and abortions is vaccines allow you to protect yourself. Abortions actually go in and kill other American babies. Let’s just put this in perspective –”

‘My body, my choice’ totally falls apart when you realize that an abortion involves another body with an entirely different DNA. We can expect more of this sort of twisting words in the near future when the Mississippi case comes before the Supreme Court.