Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.
Mississippi’s public school teachers and students keep racking up wins for our state.
A few months ago, we received terrific news regarding the latest national test scores. Our fourth-graders earned a ninth-in-the-nation overall ranking in reading and 16th place in math. Mississippi students did similarly well on state tests, achieving the highest proficiency rates ever logged on those assessments.
The recently released Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT 2025 Data Book now ranks Mississippi 16th in the nation for education — an incredible leap from 30th in 2024 and 32nd in 2023.
National media outlets have proclaimed our students’ remarkable rise in academic proficiency to be the “Mississippi Miracle,” inspiring other states’ education leaders to ask how they can be more like us.
Without a doubt, the progress made in Mississippi’s public schools is a direct result of the tireless efforts of our public school teachers and students. Their impressive work has been bolstered by tens of thousands of parents and community leaders who have been standing in the gap for decades, fighting for better school resources and, importantly, against the billionaire-backed campaign to undermine public education through private school voucher programs.
Other states have fallen victim to the voucher lobby, swayed by the millions of dollars spent pressuring them to adopt so-called “school choice” policies. Mississippi’s legislators, however, have resisted school choice, standing with their constituents and refusing to gamble with our children’s futures, thereby avoiding the financial and academic pitfalls suffered in states that embraced voucher schemes.
Nancy Loome Credit: Courtesy photoBut a piece of legislation moving through Congress poses a significant threat to our state’s education progress.
The sweeping federal budget bill, HR 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), includes a dangerous provision that would impose a nationwide tax-credit voucher program, overriding the will of states like Mississippi and threatening our historic progress.
These few paragraphs tucked into a massive federal budget bill would jeopardize the gains our students have worked so hard to achieve while adding $5 billion a year to the federal deficit.
Mississippi isn’t alone in opposing school choice schemes. Voters across the country have rejected voucher proposals every single time they’ve appeared on statewide ballots. Unfortunately, some state legislatures have ignored their constituents in favor of voucher lobbyists and donors, legislating voucher programs with devastating consequences: severe state budget shortfalls and flagging student achievement. In fact, every state named by EdChoice as a “Top 10 School Choice State” has seen academic performance decline precipitously while Mississippi’s results keep rising.
If HR 1 were to become law with the voucher provision intact, it would set Mississippi back decades and establish a dangerous precedent: allowing private interests to decide which of the country’s children will be educated with federal dollars.
The bill already has passed the House and now awaits action in the Senate where Mississippi’s own senators — Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith — could play a critical role in removing the tax-credit voucher language from the legislation. Both senators enjoy significant influence in the U.S. Senate, influence that is heightened in this case by what is expected to be a very close vote.
We urge them to consider these key points:
Mississippians have rejected vouchers time and again and do not want them forced on us by the federal government. The tax-credit voucher plan in HR 1 would reverse years of progress in our public schools. The proposed tax-credit voucher program would add $5 billion to the federal deficit annually — for a program Mississippians don’t want.Nancy Loome is executive director of The Parents’ Campaign (msparentscampaign.org) and president of The Parents’ Campaign Research & Education Fund (tpcref.org). She and her husband Jim have three grown children, all of whom graduated from Clinton Public Schools.
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