Why southern states are outperforming others in education

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:04:46 +0000

The education story of the year has been the “Southern Surge.” An intrepid group of southern states have led the nation in post-pandemic recovery. In a decade, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the nation on fourth-grade reading scores, despite remaining the poorest state.

According to Harvard’s 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard, Louisiana is the only state to recover to 2019 achievement levels in both reading and math, while Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in fourth-grade math alone. All other states continue to lag prior achievement levels.

Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of commonsense reforms: early literacy laws that require the use of phonics, the tightening of retention and promotion policies, universal literacy screeners in early grades, and rigorous curricula. But another factor may be these states’ strict disciplinary policies. The states seeing the greatest gains academically are also the ones doing the most to bring order and stability to their schools.

New York schools spend the most, but students Are falling Behind

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 15:24:51 +0000

For 18 years, up to and including Governor Kathy Hochul’s most recent proposal, the budget messages of New York’s last three governors have proudly noted that the state leads all others in school-district spending. What they omit is that, over that period, New York has remained in the middle of the pack on the National Assessments of Educational Progress. A recent report from the centrist Citizens’ Budget Commission, amplifying trends that I observed in 2022, presents a sobering picture of Albany’s failed policies.

The CBC observes that New York fourth-graders rank 32nd and 46th, respectively, on reading and math NAEP exams nationwide. Eighth-graders are 9th and 22nd, respectively. The state “now spends $36,293 per student, a 21 percent increase since the 2020-21 school year,” the report observes. “Given these middling results and the $89 billion New York School districts will spend this year—with $39 billion coming from the State budget—it is disappointing that education policy reform efforts have not focused on examining and rectifying New York’s unsatisfactory performance.” Instead, the education debate has “mostly centered on increasing State school aid even more and modestly shifting how dollars are allocated.”

New York’s political leaders continue to pump money into our public schools without regard for efficiency or effectiveness. If California has shown us how to fail at fire prevention, New York is the nation’s paragon of failing at educational improvement.

City Journal - District 91��Ƭistration

Why southern states are outperforming others in education

New York schools spend the most, but students Are falling Behind