Jackson Free Press

The annual Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Book came out this week, and for Mississippi, the same drum that politicians, advocates and locals have been beating for years will continue to sound hollow.

Mississippi ranked 50th—dead last—in the state rankings for overall child well-being. Again. We held that dubious distinction last year as well.

Each year, the foundation looks at economic well-being, education, health and family. The only category we did not rank last in was education at 48th—our brightest spot in the rankings—although advocates and researchers say it will be the key to raising our ranks for next year.

More hopeful news: Mississippi improved in nine of the 16 categories, but not fast enough to catch up to the rest of the country. Poverty continues to plague the children of our state with 246,000 living in poverty, and 27 percent living in high-poverty areas.

Dr. Linda H. Southward, director of Mississippi Kids Count, said that education and economic development are the areas to focus on for improvement. She said that until we can get more children out of poverty by having their parents be employed, we will continue to fall behind in the rankings.

Reading achievement is directly related to socioeconomics, she told us this week. Low-income students lose more levels in reading achievement than their more affluent peers, and this is before the gap widens in fifth grade, when disadvantaged children are nearly three grade levels behind their classmates in that area.

Fifty-two percent of children in Mississippi are not attending preschool, and Southward said this is problematic. She believes that we have to make improving children's chances for success a priority—from the beginning.

Improvement can come from programs like Mississippi's new Office of Early Childhood Education that opened this past January and the Pre-K collaborative program for 4-year-olds. The challenge, as always, is funding.

In economic terms, two consecutive quarters of negative growth is considered a recession. Mississippi's children have been in last place for two consecutive years. If that's not a crisis, we don't know what is. These are the issues to which everyone competing for public office should be speaking about from now until the general election in November.

This is not to ignore the incremental progress we have made. But we need more. Special education, too often overlooked, needs special attention; K-12 education needs investment. Our kids need us.

It is time to choose leadership for this state that is truly and genuinely dedicated to raising Mississippi out of the bottom of the ranks.