STARKVILLE, Miss. —
Pacing back and forth as he talked in front of the state’s most influential business group with his ever-present Western boots polished to a blinding shine, Gov. Phil Bryant appeared well at ease in his role as salesman-in-chief for his “Education Works” agenda as the 2013 legislative session .
Bryant used his time addressing the Mississippi Economic Council’s “Capital Day” event to urge the state’s business community to embrace his $26 million education plan — one that relies on some substantive basic reforms that have eluded the state for years but that seem — in most cases - infinitely doable from a political standpoint.
As an organization that has a half-century track record of both talking the talk and walking the walk in supporting public education in Mississippi, MEC was the perfect forum for Bryant to make his pitch. The MEC has honored the state’s best and brightest high school scholars with STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Recognition) student status for the last 46 years.
Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum reiterated MEC’s status as a business group that values education when he unveiled a new MSU scholarship program that will offer MEC’s STAR students $6,000 in additional scholarships. In doing so, MSU becomes the first Mississippi university to make that investment as an effort to keep the state’s best students in Mississippi to pursue their educations.
Bryant told the MEC crowd that he struggled as a child with reading before a teacher recognized that he was struggling in fact with dyslexia.
“I just thought I was dumb,” Bryant said. “The teacher knew better and told me so.” Bryant went on to tell the familiar story of his diesel mechanic father’s support of his family and the dignity of jobs produced from vocation, technical and workforce training.
But Bryant’s “Education Works” program focus is what he called the “literacy crisis” and the consequences of the continuation of Mississippi’s long history of so-called “social promotion” — passing students to the next grade when they are not academically prepared to do work on that new grade level.
Bryant said: “Data show that 46 percent of third-graders and 78 percent of fourth-graders in Mississippi are not proficient in reading. The problem only gets worse as students pass to the next grade, and by eighth grade, a student who couldn’t read proficiently in third grade is four times more likely to drop out of school than his peers.”
The “Education Works” agenda has other main points: Raising standards for teacher and a teacher merit pay pilot program; continuing early childhood education efforts; increasing school choice through charter school legislation and open enrollment ; and a program that would provide $10 million in tax credits to individuals or businesses who donate funds for students in low-performing school districts to attend private schools.
With Republicans in charge in both houses of the Legislature, much of Bryant’s plan should win legislative support. But there are policy disagreements over charter schools among GOP colleagues — and the open enrollment proposals are certain to generate criticism in some circles.
The MEC crowd by and large liked what they heard from Bryant as he made his pitch. One line in particular that drew applause was this one: “We have 152 walls that we build around these school districts, and we won’t let students in or out. I want to change that.”
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Opinion
Bryant’s school plan workable
- Opinion
-
-
Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
-
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
-
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
-
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
-
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
-
Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
Probe Begins After Conn. Commuter Trains Crash
NTSB Begins Investigation Into Conn. Train Crash
Lotto Fever Sweeps the Country
Conn. Commuter Trains Collide; 60 Go to Hospital
Coffee Run Leads to Hatchet Hitchhiker Arrest
Fmr. IRS Head Insists No Politics in Targeting
CDC: Fecal Bacteria Common in Swimming Pools
$1 Million in Jewels Stolen at Cannes Film Fest
NM Mom Chases Down Child Abductor
Raw: Crash Sends Car Into Fla. Pool
Raw: Obama Sits Down With Elementary Kids
Raw: Bear Falls From Tampa Tree
Ousted IRS Chief: Errors Not Caused by Politics
Terror Suspect Due in Court in Idaho Friday
Raw: Driver Ejected From Truck, Over Bridge
Could Tobacco Be the Next Biofuel?
Wash. State Releases Draft Rules for Legal Pot
Dying Man's Blinks Lead to Murder Conviction
Officials: Texas Tornado Likely Had 200 Mph Wind
Brothers Arrested in NOLA Parade Shooting
