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The assessment was conducted by the PPI’s Director of Education Policy, Rachel Canter, who spent nearly two decades in Mississippi advocating for systemic reforms, which transformed the state’s students from having among the lowest literacy rates in the nation to having some of the highest
And Canter’s study found one overwhelming and shocking throughline — the stronger the state’s teachers’ union the worse its student literacy scores were, results which did not exclusively follow party lines but strongly trended that way and often to the detriment of Democrats.
“Democrats, however, don’t often ask me how to replicate Mississippi’s success,” Canter said. “They ask if it’s possible at all, given the power of teachers’ unions in their home states.”
One reason for the disparity, Canter argued, is that states where teacher unions have a strong grip are slower to enact better programs.
She looked at 18 literacy policies recommended by ExcelinEd and found Democratic states had undertaken nine of them on average, while Republican and swing states had adopted an average of 13.5.
“States dominated by Democrats have been slower to embrace similar reforms,” Canter said. “Organized labor might explain some of this gap.”
Canter’s successes were a meteoric transformation of Mississippi’s students — in 2013 the state had some of the worst test scores for middle and elementary students in the country, but by 2024 they had climbed to seventh in literacy and 13th in math.
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