FACT: Schools can get much better.

THE NUMBERS: Mississippi 4th-grade reading scores, compared to national averages –

2024	+4
2022	+1
2017	-6
2011	-11
2007	-12
2000	-14

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Next month, Mississippi’s 235 high schools will send 28,000 graduating seniors off carrying their diplomas to first jobs, military service, college dorms, gap years, etc, and adult life. The 28,000 figure represents a 90.8% graduation rate, the highest in Mississippi history and one of America’s 10 highest. By contrast, when this spring’s grads arrived in kindergarten in 2012, Mississippi’s graduation rate was 75%, tied with Alabama for the country’s 6th-lowest rate. What has happened? And what might school-watchers learn from it?

Offering lessons drawn from her two decades of hands-on experience with Mississippi school reform, PPI Education Director Rachel Canter argues in PPI’s newest research paper that to make American schools a lot better, reformers should avoid hoping for miracles. They should run marathons instead. Background, and then some conclusions:

Every three years since 2000, the U.S. has joined 37 other OECD members, and 57 other interested governments abroad, in the Programme for International Student Assessment (“PISA” for short). Every three years, PISA tests 5,000 15-year-olds in each participating country on reading, science, and math, and then publishes assessments of student achievement that governments, parents, and educators can compare both over time and among countries. The data span some big U.S. national education reform efforts — No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core — and, a little dishearteningly, show American school performance staying about the same. The newest results are from the 2022 tests — 2026 figures arrive in September — and almost perfectly match the oldest:

Year	Reading	Math	Science
2022	504	465	499
2018	505	478	502
2012	498	481	497
2009	500	487	502
2000	504	493	499

PISA’s rankings of American students vis-à-vis foreign countries are a little more variable than their scores, but tell a similar story. Just as U.S. school performances typically show New England at the top, the Deep South and Southwest at the bottom, and the others in between, each PISA comparison has put East Asian schools — Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan – first, with Canada and some smaller northern European countries (Estonia, Switzerland, Ireland) a shade below. U.S. students usually score a bit above the world median and a tier below the best performers. Since 2000, they’ve placed in a range from 8th to 17th in reading, 25th to 30th in math, and 10th to 20th in science. The U.S.’ best-ever ranking was 6th in reading in 2022, not because that year’s American teens improved on their elders’ performance, but because foreigners’ pandemic scores fell more sharply than America’s. In essence, U.S. schools get a sort of “B-” average, sustained with little change throughout the 21st century.

This sort of result can lead to fatalism and passivity. If big national efforts don’t change outcomes much, and what matters instead are locality and family commitments (or even more dispiriting, amorphous cultural or historical factors), why bother?  But Canter’s in-depth review of Mississippi’s reading progress shows that fatalism is wrong.

Outside stereotypes of Mississippi mix high culture and outsized historic impact – Faulkner and Welty, Delta blues, the civil rights movement — with low incomes, social stratification, outmigration, poor health, and white flight from public schools. School outcomes before 2010 didn’t do much to disprove this, generally placing Mississippi in the bottom five, if not 49th or 50th. But this spring’s graduates are leaving a school system very different from the one they joined in 2012. Mississippi’s reading ranking, for example, is up to 9th nationally — best in the south and at par with Connecticut and Utah — and Canter notes that “normalizing” data for family income would put Mississippi’s teenage readers first in the country.

How did this happen? Canter objects to the commonly used term “Mississippi miracle”. (A “miracle” implies divine intervention, or some unexpected flash of insight enabling rapid and easy change, and little actual work.) Instead, she attributes Mississippi’s schooling rise to a long “marathon” of stable and essentially non-partisan policy basics, dutifully implemented over a period of years. Her list of “policies” is shorter than the description of their steady implementation in practice:

• A reading competency law in 2013 that required holding back students who don’t pass a reading exam, along with special help for struggling students

• Support for teachers in understanding and using better practices, like scientifically based reading instruction

• Annual “A to F” grades for schools based on student achievement, with state intervention in schools at the bottom.

In sum: Using the “marathon” metaphor, over the life of one school cohort — from their arrival as kindergarteners in the autumn 15 years ago, to the spring morning when they break the tape as graduates — Mississippi’s schools got much better.

So: As Mississippi’s May grads flip their tassels, tired school reformers should take heart from their story. Mediocre schools can, in fact, become very good, and good ones can become great.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.

Mississippi Marathon:

PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools project.

PPI’s Rachel Canter explains the “Mississippi Marathon” in the Atlantic (subs. req.).

… and provides the full picture at PPI.

Canter’s Mississippi First nonprofit advocates for education reform, reading programs, and public charter schools. (PPI note: The name dates to 2008, and has no relationship to current administration slogans.)

And the Mississippi Education Department.

U.S. data:

The Education Department’s “National Education Report Card” has maps with state-by-state rankings and scores for reading, math, and science.

… and from the same source, a look at Mississippi schools’ changing fortunes, 1992-2024.

Good examples abroad:

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment has data and analysis of school performance in the 38 OECD member countries, plus 57 “partner” countries also joining the PISA assessments.

Singapore topped the last PISA rankings in 2022. The Education Ministry reviews the elementary school curriculum.

Estonia gets Europe’s highest scores. Education Estonia explains.

Japan places the highest among large-population countries. The U.S.-based National Center on Education and the Economy has an enthusiastic review.

Ireland’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Trump administration tariffs haven’t achieved their goals.

THE NUMBERS: Manufacturing share of U.S. GDP –

2025	9.40%
2024	9.80%
2016	10.80%

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Every March for the last half-century, per the Trade Act of 1974, the staff at the U.S. Trade Representative Office has written up a formal report on the administration’s trade goals for the coming year, entitled “The President’s Trade Agenda,” and sent it to Congress. A month later, the two Congressional Committees responsible for trade policy — Ways and Means in the House, Finance in the Senate — fetch them up for a public hearing to explain it. Last year’s hearings, a week after the Trump administration’s April 2 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff decree, were a bit rocky. They did, though, extract an explanation of what the administration wanted the decree to do. Here’s Amb. Greer:

“The deficit [i.e., trade balance] needs to go in the right direction. Manufacturing as a share of GDP needs to go in the right direction.” 

A year later, tariffs are deeply unpopular, and the Supreme Court has demolished the April 2 decree and its seven “IEEPA” companions. Nonetheless, the administration has kept a jury-rigged high-tariff system in place through claims of a “balance of payments crisis” and constantly shifting Commerce Department “national security” decrees. Yale BudgetLab calculations estimate that the average U.S. tariff rate is 11.8% this week — down from a 19% peak last summer, but still nearly five times the 2.5% average of January 2025. The administration’s pitch to the Committees last year was that even if tariff decrees imposed “some pain” on families — two-dolls-per-girl rations, broader price increases, etc. — and damaged the Constitutional separation of powers, the benefits of a lower U.S. goods-trade deficit and a relatively larger manufacturing industry would outweigh the harms.

With Amb. Greer’s return engagements coming up — likely next week — how is it working out? Trade balance and GDP shares are secondary and tertiary stats, and not necessarily the right measurements of success. (As an example, very rapid growth in digital industries would mean the GDP shares of the other sectors shrink even if they’re all doing fine.) Many would prefer examining trade policy’s contributions to primary indicators like economic growth, job creation, stable prices, and low unemployment. But balance and GDP share are at least specific and measurable. Here’s a look at how the trade balance and the manufacturing share of GDP have changed, set against “pain” and Constitutional questions:

1. Trade balance: Not yet clear. The trade-balance stats for 2025 and 2024, with 2016 — the Obama administration’s final year, before the first Trump administration’s tariff increases in mid-2018 – added as a longer-term comparison, look like this:

	2016	2024	2025
Goods and services	-$479 billion	-$904 billion	-$901 billion
Goods only	-$750 billion	-$1,215 billion	-$1,241 billion
Manufacturing only	-$647 billion	-$1,202 billion	-$1,236 billion
Trade balance/ GDP ratio	2.7%	3.1%	3.0%

Census for goods/services and goods balances; BEA’s GDP database for trade balance/GDP ratio; U.S. International Trade Commission Dataweb for manufacturing-only balance (NAICS basis).

So, not much change. The 2025 deficit was about the same as that of 2024, and larger than that of 2016. (PPI note: Comparing dollar-value trade balances over long periods of time is usually misleading, as the figures don’t account for inflation and GDP growth. For 2016, the GDP ratio is best.) On Amb. Greer’s side, though, Census’ monthly figures might be trending down: up sharply in early 2025 as businesses rushed to get low-tariff goods in before tariffs rose; back down by summer as inventories filled; and a few more downward than upward spikes since then.

2. Manufacturing share of GDP: Down. The manufacturing share of U.S. GDP fell from 9.8% of GDP in 2024 to 9.4% in 2025. Job figures concur — manufacturing hiring fell by about 400,000 in 2025, and factories shed 108,000 jobs on net. Conclusions after one turbulent year might be premature, but in 2016 the manufacturing share of U.S. GDP was a lot higher – 10.8% – so post-2017 tariff increases haven’t lifted it. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as U.S. manufacturers are some of the country’s largest importers – Census finds them buying $1.2 trillion of $2.9 trillion in known goods imports in 2024 (latest year available) – and are presumably now carrying some of the heaviest Trump tariff burdens.

Overall, last year’s GDP-share trend looks like the one you’d expect from a general tax on purchases of physical goods. BEA data show the shares of mining, construction, manufacturing, restaurants, and retail all down a bit, and that of agriculture flat, while the corresponding shares of financial services, legal services, information industry, and health grew. So as tariffs raised goods costs, manufacturers, along with other big goods-buyers, shrank relative to industries that spend relatively less of their money on physical goods, and more on services and investment.

3. How much pain? Mr. Trump’s 2024 platform promised to “defeat inflation and quickly bring down all prices.” Tariffs, by contrast, are meant to raise prices, and that’s happened. Harvard Business School’s tariff price tracker follows prices for a basket of tariffed goods and similar domestic goods. It finds that the tariffs have raised prices by about 7.0% above trend rise for the imported things, 4.6% for the domestic substitutes, and 0.8% across the entire goods-and-services economy. Federal Reserve economists concur. Spread across families, a Joint Economic Committee calculation finds this has cost families about $1,750 per household on average.

4. And the Constitution? Returning to USTR’s report, the 2026 version of the “President’s Trade Agenda” report has a startling second line: “[T]he Constitution is our most important trade agreement.” If so, the Trump administration has a big trade-agreement compliance problem. Article I’s first “enumerated power” – “Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises” – is pretty clear. So is the third sentence, assigning Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” If a president can set new tariff rates at will by declaring emergencies, and can conclude ‘deals’ with foreign countries altering both U.S. tariff rates and U.S. regulations without Congressional approval or negotiating objectives, do these clauses mean anything?

The Committees have lots to ask about next week.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.

Documents:

The Constitution; see Article I, Section 8, for authority over tariffs and trade regulation.

USTR’s “President’s Trade Agenda” reports for 2026 and 2025.

The White House’s April 2nd, 2025, “IEEPA” decree.

The Supreme Court’s Feb. 20, 2026 Learning Resources v. Trump opinion striking it down, along with the IEEPA decrees related to India, fentanyl, Brazilian court cases, etc.

The White House’s February “Balance of Payments Emergency” decree, currently in effect but under court challenge.

And the Commerce Department backs away from its August attempt to define condensed milk and balance beams as “steel or aluminum derivative products”, but raises tariffs on a lot of appliances and other metal things instead.

Data:

Census’ monthly FT-900 trade data reports have exports, imports, balances, etc., through February 2026.

BEA’s GDP figures (and use “GDP by Industry” for manufacturing specifically),

Yale BudgetLab calculates tariff rates.

Harvard Business School professors track price increases.

Fed economists report similar results last week.

Public:

A February Trade Fact takes a deep dive into trade and tariff polling over 2025 and early 2026. Summary: As Amb. Greer spoke to the Committees last April, a broad average across polls suggests that the public opposed Mr. Trump’s tariff decrees by about 60% to 35%, and little has changed since.

And a last look back at the IEEPA decrees:

As a tax matter, in the end, the administration’s eight “IEEPA” tariff decrees raised “negative $4 billion” in revenue and arguably “negative $9 billion.” Though Customs and Border Patrol’s “Trade Statistics” page still mournfully says buyers paid $166 billion in the IEEPA tariffs, CBP now has to pay all it all back with interest  By PPI Fiscal Policy Analyst Alex Kilander’s calculations, the decision to defend the IEEPA decrees all the way to the Supreme Court means at least $4 billion in extra liability for taxpayers. Here’s why:

The administration lost its IEEPA case at the Court of International Trade on May 28, 2025. The decision to appeal this all the way to the Supreme Court appeals stretched the litigation out until February 20, 2026. That would be 268 days. As the IRS explains, ordinary Treasury borrowing pays about 4% interest (a rough average; longer-term T-bills pay higher rates than shorter-term), but interest on mistakenly or illegally collected money costs 7%. Anyone who has contemplated buying a house feels intuitively uneasy seeing that sort of spread. Kilander has the formula:

T-bill borrowing rate proxy:	$166 billion * (1 + 0.04/2)2*0.75  =	$171 billion
Tariff refund with interest:	$166 billion * (1 + 0.07/365)365*0.75  =	$175 billion

In sum, the administration’s 268 days of litigation meant an extra 3% interest on its borrowing. Assuming spending patterns remained the same, that means they (more precisely, “we,” as taxpayers) are out $175 billion, an extra $4 billion. Or, had it decided to scale back the ‘reconciliation bill’ after the Court of International Trade loss and not borrow the $166 billion at all, we would have saved $9 billion.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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