Wow, Mississippi ranks 6th nationally in “education freedom.” That’s terrific, right?

The Heritage Foundation recently published for the first time its “Education Freedom Report Card.” To reach its overall score for each state it combined scores it calculated for schools in four categories – school choice, transparency, regulatory freedom, and spending. Mississippi’s scores in each category were 13th, 30th, 1st, and 23rd respectively. If the report’s title didn’t make it obvious that regulatory freedom would matter most in overall scoring, these scores do.

Florida received the top ranking. Its scores by the four categories were 3rd, 1st, 2nd, and 7th. Not hard to see here why Florida’s overall score was 1st. The Heritage blurb about Florida stated, “Families looking for a state that embraces education freedom, respects parents’ rights, and provides a decent ROI for taxpayers should look no further than The Sunshine State.”

Read the report here: https://www.heritage.org/educationreportcard/index.html

So how does this metric compare with more traditional measures of school success? Well, the most recent data showed Florida ranked 34th and Mississippi 48th in high school graduation rates. ACT scores assess high school students’ readiness for college – Florida ranked 27th on average ACT scores and Mississippi 49th. Educational attainment data shows how many high school graduates go on to achieve 4-year college degrees. In this category Florida ranked 34th and Mississippi 49th.

I have written several times in the past about “truth management” from well-funded national policy institutes and research centers that propagate research and findings supportive of pre-conceived notions, i.e., they tailor “truth” to fit stipulated concepts. So, it should be no surprise that the top five scoring states in the Heritage report, Florida, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, and South Dakota were among the most conservative states while the worst five scoring states, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, were among the most liberal.

One fascinating aspect of Heritage’s analysis showed up in the spending category. The foundation calculated a return on school investment (ROI) for each state. The numerator of the resulting fraction was the average of NAEP scores for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading. The denominator was per average pupil spending in public schools. Mississippi graded 37th in average NAEP scores and 45th in spending per pupil. While this does show Mississippi doing pretty good using its limited funding to teach to the tests, it implies that more spending to improve scores would reduce Heritage’s ROI score. For example, Connecticut graded 3rd in NAEP scores and 3rd in per pupil spending but 50th for ROI.

Indeed, Heritage’s approach could be used to justify reduced school spending in Mississippi.

In summary, what Heritage’s “Economic Freedom Score Card” really celebrates is freedom to be average (Florida) to inferior (Mississippi) in school performance.

Wow, indeed!

“Foolish people! How long do you want to be foolish? How long will you enjoy making fun of knowledge? Will you never learn?” – Proverbs 1:22.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.