Jackson Free Press

In January, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves used Mississippi Department of Education data to conclude that lower-performing school districts spend their education funding on administrative costs rather than on instruction. Thus, Reeves oddly concluded, that must be the reason they performed worse than A and B school districts.

It is a leap in logic to say that districts in more affluent areas perform better with less public dollars; thus, that's all the funds poorer districts need. Besides, it's not based in fact. A 2013 PEER report revealed that only 10 Mississippi school districts spend less than 60 percent of their total budget, from federal to local contributions, on instructional costs. Then, last week Sen. Gray Tollison, R-Oxford, told the Senate he had "no doubt" that the appointment, rather than the election of school superintendents, would positively affect student achievement. Then, he told the Senate that he had no data—but he was confident about it anyway.

It is difficult to believe that legislators are truly invested in providing solutions for schools when they allow ideology rather than evidence, faulty logic rather than critical analysis, and agenda rather than altruism to guide their decision-making skills regarding the state of Mississippi's public schools. It is difficult to believe that legislators share those same sentiments when they take resources and a compassionate ear away from the educators and administrators who work to educate kids even as schools and neighborhoods fall apart around them.

Then they tell the very educators who struggle to provide textbooks and school supplies for children from poor families that they do not deserve more money due to the unfounded claims that "no evidence" exists that proves that money affects student achievement.

And it's remarkable that legislators first brand education as a "political" issue and then try to pass laws that say the very people in the education trenches every day cannot legally talk about what they believe is best for those children.

An investment in education is an investment in the strength of the public good. More than 90 percent of Mississippi's children attend public schools, all of which have the potential to produce an intelligent and thriving citizenship that will ensure a similarly successful future for this great state.

Education should not be the battleground for ideological arguments. Anecdotal evidence falters in the face of data and evidence, which legislators should consider in the face of the crisis of poverty in Mississippi, which still robs children of the equality of opportunity that allows them more chances to be healthier and more successful adults. Children living in poverty need additional resources just to keep up, much less excel. It may be inconvenient to Tate Reeves and Gray Tollison's politics, but it is fact.

But dangerously, legislators scratch at the surface of data, rather than applying information to the depth of nuance it deserves. This cherry-picking can shortchange schools of more than money, which they already lack—but progress, which the state desperately needs. It also, ironically, sends a sadly anti-intellectual message to kids that if they don't like something, just dismiss it as "political."