A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Nervous in New England: Can the North rise again?

Massachusetts public schools were the best in the nation, and the rest of New England wasn’t far behind, writes Christopher Huffaker in the Boston Globe. Ten years ago, Massachusetts students “led the United States across ages, subjects, and most demographic groups, despite wide achievement gaps,” on the Nation’s Report Card. Students in the Deep South, who came from much poorer families, were at the bottom.

Now test scores are falling in New England, rising in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama, he writes. While leaders of the “Southern Surge” focused relentlessly on improving reading instruction, New England schools were lowering expectations, Huffaker writes. To end the Massachusetts Malaise, leaders must “override the wishes of popular and powerful teachers unions, and, most of all, stop resting on their laurels.”

Karen Vaites and others have written about the Southern Surge in reading scores for months now, but it’s an essay last week by Kelsey Piper, Illiteracy is a policy choice, that seems to have woken everybody up. “If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools,” wrote Piper in The Argument.

No, Mississippi isn’t cooking the books, Piper and Vaites write this week, also in The Argument. With far fewer resources than most states and far needier students, these deep South states are showing impressive progress.

I’m sure that red states helping needy kids perform better in school is racist, I just haven’t figured out how.