Mississippi Learning: Why the State's Students Start Behind

Although neighboring states have made great strides in early education, Mississippi remains the only state in the South - and just one of 11 in the country - that doesn't fund any pre-k programs. In 2011, the state's fourth-graders were outperformed on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress by their peers in 44 states. Legislators have held firm in the belief that the economically depressed state cannot afford pre-k. Nationally over the past decade, enrollment in pre-k programs has soared even as state funding has declined by more than $700 per child, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. Dick Molpus, a former Mississippi secretary of state who helped guide the 1982 education reform that required the state's public schools to offer kindergarten, agrees.

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