Sometimes it’s fun to rummage around in published data to see what you can find – or not find.

The recent article in the New York Times expounding progress by Mississippi students prompted my latest rummage. The 3rd grade reading gate promulgated by Gov. Phil Bryant in 2013 was given much credit for marvelous improvements in NAEP scores by Mississippi 4th graders.

So how about ACT scores, I wondered? Are those early grade improvements sticking through high school? Also, with graduation rates up, are more Mississippi high school grads going to Mississippi public universities?

I delved into Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) data first. NAEP scores for 4th grade reading and math have jumped significantly since 2013. The ACT assessment is given during the junior year. A 2013 4th grader would have been a junior in 2020. So, from 2020 through 2022, how much did ACT scores improve?

Nada.

Instead the average composite ACT score trended down from 17.6 to 17.4. So, too, did the average scores for the math and reading sections.

A look back at MDE information on NAEP scores showed 4th grade gains hardly extended to 8th grade. Maybe we need an 8th grade gate too.

The grad to university question got dicey. Nowhere could I find how many high school students graduate each year. I could find graduation percentages, which are up, but no numbers.

The closest to an actual number comes from multiplying the graduation rate times the four-year cohort used by the formula. For 2023 that would be 88.9% times 32,681 for 29,053. Add on 11% for private school graduates (the proportion of high school students attending private schools) and the number increases to 32,249.

The MDE web site showed that 12% of the 2020 graduating class enrolled in a public Mississippi university. There was nothing more current. The percentage had ranged from 13% to 15% in pre-COVID years. Using 15%, the number of grads headed to our public universities would be about 4,800.

IHL data for Fall 2022 showed 15,405 freshmen enrolled (includes holdovers). It also showed 10,086 entering freshmen had ACT scores. Non-resident students made up 35.3% of total enrollment. Putting all that together suggests a range of 3,560 to 5,437 entering freshmen were Mississippi high school graduates.

A third source should have had the answer, Mississippi Lifetracks, now an Accelerate Mississippi project. But it has not been updated in several years.

Yuck. Surely, more of our high school graduates attend our public universities?

As for my question, IHL data for 2017 to 2022 showed a relatively flat trend in the total number of freshmen each year. So, most likely the number of high school grads going to our public universities has not increased.

Not a great rummage, huh?

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.