Advocate: KIDS COUNT reveals the good in education, but the bad in healthcare for Mississippi children
By Ashley Parker Sheils | Originally published by Mississippi Today
Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.
Children and educators in Mississippi are powering one of the biggest statistical anomalies in this year’s 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In this report, the most comprehensive annual 50-state overview of child well-being, Mississippi was a leader in education gains — but also ranked at the bottom nationally in categories such as child and teen deaths and children living in poverty.
The Data Book aggregates and reports on 16 measures of child well-being in every state in the areas of education, economic stability, health, and family and community, and ranks the states accordingly. This year’s Data Book adds a new feature: each state receives a score of 0-1,000 in addition to a ranking, both overall and in each of the 16 indicators measured from 2019 to 2024.
While Mississippi ranked 50th in the Data Book for overall child well-being, with a score of 271 out of 1,000, we ranked 16th in education, with a score of 448. More impressively, while 47 states’ education scores have declined since 2019, Mississippi’s has improved.
Mississippi has proven through our educational gains we can do better. We’ve shown that when we put our minds to it, we can become a national example for transforming education. We are not destined to remain at the bottom. Now we have the opportunity to do more to improve Mississippi children’s lives and ensure they have what they need not just to survive, but thrive.
Much has been written and said about the “Mississippi Miracle.” While this is a catchy moniker, the improved reading outcomes are the result of intentional legislation backed by resources and accountability, teachers using their instructional time focused on the science of teaching reading and people and communities all over the state working together for our kids’ futures. We can celebrate this win (and we should!), but we must continue to build on this momentum.
Lawmakers came together across party lines in 2013 on two pieces of legislation designed to work together and lay the foundation for reading success: The Early Learning Collaborative Act establishing Mississippi’s first state-funded pre-K program and the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a multi-pronged plan to get children reading at grade level.
The first law expanded access to pre-K, giving 4-year-olds a strong foundation for kindergarten.
The second focused on state-approved literacy curricula grounded in phonics and comprehension, literacy coaches for teachers so they know how to best use those curricula in their classrooms, frequent screening for reading progress, approved interventions for students who need support and holding back students who do not meet benchmarks by the end of third grade.
Crucially, these laws didn’t leave it to school districts to figure out how to improve students’ reading. They equipped educators with the tools and resources they needed to reach and engage every student and provided experts – literacy coaches employed by the Mississippi Department of Education – to walk alongside teachers in areas with the greatest need as they applied the science of teaching reading. The “miraculous” results of these efforts make it clear: to support our children, we must first support our teachers.
The same goes for Mississippi communities, which have been quietly, behind the scenes, supporting children and families so that today’s kids can break the cycle of generations of unfulfilled educational potential.
For example, in Vicksburg, the United Way of West Central Mississippi recently received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to expand its SOAR United Literacy Intervention Program from two counties to 21. SOAR — Serving Others by Accelerating Reading — supports students in kindergarten through fifth grade with tutoring grounded in the same evidence-based reading strategies mandated by the state, and giving children books to take home.
But SOAR, and other programs throughout the state, go beyond work with children. If we want our kids to succeed, we have to expand our focus on literacy to the adults in their lives – a multi-generation approach. Local groups are convening adult reading groups in churches and community centers, talking to parents and grandparents without judgment about the importance of reading to children and providing educational games and books for families to take home.
We have to meet families where they are, not where we think they should be.
Our work in education is far from done. Next up is proposed legislation to improve math skills among all students and continue the third-grade reading gains through eighth grade. We need to continue screening children for reading difficulties and provide appropriate interventions when they need support to progress — without stigma and without penalty.
And even as we expand our progress, we cannot ignore racial and ethnic gaps, as the Data Book shows us that our Black and Latino students need more support to meet statewide reading levels. We cannot settle for statistics that mask harsh disparities, but have to recommit so Mississippi’s education transformation touches all students, regardless of ZIP code, county, race or ethnicity.
We also have substantial work to do in the other areas of our kids’ lives. Mississippi is leading in education gains — but we also trail the nation in infant mortality, low birthweights and children living in poverty.
Just think about how much better our children’s outcomes would be if we applied the same laser focus we have on literacy to children’s health and economic stability. Then our education ranking would no longer be an anomaly, but one of many measures of Mississippi’s excellence.
For Mississippi to reach its full potential, we must make sure our state’s children reach theirs.
Ashley Parker Sheils is the chief executive officer of the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, home to the Mississippi KIDS COUNT data center and a non-profit focused on improving the well-being of children in Mississippi by strengthening the systems, programs, and policies that impact communities, our young people and their families. With more than two decades in literacy education and programming, she has led students, teachers, research and statewide initiatives all toward the goal of improving reading.. In the past five years, Sheils has secured over $13 million in grant funding to support literacy-related work in Mississippi. Her most esteemed title is “Mom” to twin boys.
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
