{"id":761,"date":"2021-06-23T20:29:17","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T20:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wptest.mdek12.org\/testsite2\/2021\/06\/23\/mississippi-education-remains-strongest-factor-in-kids-count-national-data_20210623\/"},"modified":"2024-08-08T14:18:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T14:18:48","slug":"mississippi-education-remains-strongest-factor-in-kids-count-national-data_20210623","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/2021\/06\/23\/mississippi-education-remains-strongest-factor-in-kids-count-national-data_20210623\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi Education Remains Strongest Factor in Kids Count National Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\"><strong>NEWS RELEASE<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For Immediate Release: &nbsp;June 23, 2021<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 13px\">JACKSON, Miss. \u2013 Mississippi held its education ranking of 39th in the country in 2021, a substantial gain from its 48th position in 2014, according to new data released in the Annie E. Casey Foundation\u2019s annual KIDS COUNT\u00ae 2021 Data Book.<\/p>\n<p>The data book describes how children across the United States were faring before and during the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, Mississippi ranked 50th in the nation for child well-being, which tracks four domains: economic well-being, health, family and community, and education. Education was the only domain that ranked above 50th in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>KIDS COUNT\u00ae ranks education by measuring pre-K enrollment, 4th grade reading skills, 8th grade math proficiency and the high school graduation rate.<\/p>\n<p>Pre-K enrollment in Mississippi\u2019s Early Learning Collaboratives has grown from 1,700 in 2014-2015 to more than 3,000 in 2020-21. The Legislature doubled funding in 2021, which will boost enrollment to 6,000. Mississippi ranks No. 1 in the nation for gains in 4th grade reading and mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and No. 3 for gains in 8th grade mathematics. The state\u2019s graduation rate reached an all-time high of 87.7% in 2021, exceeding the most recent national rate of 85%.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMississippi students, teachers and schools achieved historic academic gains before the pandemic and have not let up on their pursuit of higher academic achievement,\u201d said Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education. \u201cEducation in Mississippi continues to be a bright spot among the indicators of child well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though Mississippi\u2019s overall child well-being ranking dropped to 50th from 49th in 2020, 13 of the 16 KIDS COUNT\u00ae indicators improved.<\/p>\n<p>The Children\u2019s Foundation of Mississippi will soon release the <a href=\"https:\/\/childrensfoundationms.org\/project\/blueprint-for-success\/\"><u>Blueprint for Improving the Future of Mississippi\u2019s Children<\/u><\/a>, which will help guide the state toward the best possible future for all Mississippi children.<\/p>\n<p>The 2021 KIDS COUNT\u00ae Data Book is available at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aecf.org\/\"><u>www.aecf.org<\/u><\/a>. Additional information is available at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aecf.org\/databook\"><u>www.aecf.org\/databook<\/u><\/a>, which also contains the most recent national, state and local data on hundreds of indicators of child well-being. Journalists interested in creating maps, graphs and rankings in stories about the Data Book can use the KIDS COUNT Data Center at <a href=\"https:\/\/datacenter.kidscount.org\/\"><u>datacenter.kidscount.org<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEWS RELEASE&nbsp; For Immediate Release: &nbsp;June 23, 2021 JACKSON, Miss. \u2013 Mississippi held its education ranking of 39th in the country in 2021, a substantial gain from its 48th position in 2014, according to new data released in the Annie E. Casey Foundation\u2019s annual KIDS COUNT\u00ae 2021 Data Book. The data book describes how children [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2837,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/2837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpdev01.mdek12.org\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}