- 2009 MS Dept. of Education Accountability Model Maps
- Charter School Studies, Articles, and Commentary
- School Consolidation
- MS School Dist. Property Assessments, Millage Rates, and Mill Values
- MS Legislative Task Force on Underperforming Schools 2008-2010
- Public School Innovation Zones
- Southern Echo’s MS Educational Issues Maps
- Southern Echo’s MS Educational Issues Charts
- Southern Echo Educational Issues Posters
- Brown Paper #2: Building Healthy Schools and Quality Education in MS
- Justice Funding Paper
- Positive Behavior Intervention Programs
- Visualizing the Mississippi State Budget, 2005
- Southern Echo’s Census Maps
- Southern Echo’s Census Flyers
- Census and Redistricting: a 5-year Program of Work (2008-2013)
- Voting Rights Act Amicus Brief
Southern Echo’s Newsletter ‘Struggles’
Click to Download the following Southern Echo publications:
| Public Education: | |
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2009 MS Dept. of Education Accountability Model Maps These maps illustrate the data provided by the MS Dept. of Education concerning the first year, 2009-2010, of the new Education Accountability Model. These maps show the Accountability Status assigned to each school district, the Quality Distribution Index (QDI) score assigned to each district, whether each district met Growth Goals, district Graduation Rates, correlation of Percent of Students At-Risk with Accountability Status, and correlation of Black Student Percentage by district with Accountability Status. |
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Charter School Studies, Articles, and Commentary Here are some studies and articles, covering a very large canvass of charter schools and charter school students nationally, that make a research-based evidence case that privately-owned privately-governed publicly-funded charter schools have not out performed traditional public schools, have not provided meaningful competition for traditional public schools, have not innovated as they are touted to do, and have enhanced rather than mitigated both racial and economic segregation. |
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School Consolidation Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is pressuring the state to consolidate schools. In this section materials and studies on school consolidation will be posted that will provide analysis, data and understanding of the issues relating to school consolidation, including the impact of consolidation on student performance, student dropout and graduation rates, student quality of life, whether actual economies of scale can be achieved by consolidation, and whether the impact is different among rural versus urban communities. |
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MS School Dist. Property Assessments, Millage Rates, & Mill Values This section provides information, including maps, on the total assessed value of real property, the millage rates levied, and the value of a single mill for each local school district in Mississippi. |
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MS Legislative Task Force on Underperforming Schools 2008-2010 In 2008 the MS Legislature created the MS Legislative Task Force on Underperforming Schools, mandated that it assess the problems and their causes in underperforming schools, inquire into issues surrounding alternative schools, school consolidation and charter schools, and make policy recommendations to the Legislature. In 2008 the Task Force, comprised of legislators, educators and business representatives, framed a package of recommendations that led to adoption of the Children First Act of 2009. The Legislature mandated that the Task Force continue its work through 2009. This section includes the recommendations of the Task Force, analysis and recommendations made by Southern Echo and the MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable to the Task Force and to legislators in 2008 and 2010, and the Children First Act of 2009 as adopted by the Legislature. |
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Public School Innovation Zones The Obama administration has made it the centerpiece of its national education policy and funding strategies. “Innovation Zones” may provide a different approach to creative education strategies. In 2009 West Virginia chose a path dramatically different than the charter school legislation that has been proposed in Mississippi since 2004. West Virginia enacted an Innovation Zones law which authorizes school districts, public schools, groups of public schools, and part of a public school to experiment with creative innovation The WV innovation zone plan must be based on research-based evidence, approved and governed by licensed, qualified educators rather than private sector entrepreneurs, and is subject to intense oversight and accountability by educators and community. A WV Innovation Zone must comply with all state laws, regulations, benchmarks and standards unless it can be shown that an exemption is necessary to fulfill the objectives of the Innovation Zone. |
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Southern Echo’s MS Educational Issues Maps Southern Echo creates educational issues maps to enable education stakeholders and public officials to visualize complex education, demographic and political data that impacts education issues. These maps enable people to visualize their own situation and compare it others. Many grassroots and statewide business and educator organizations have used our maps to inform their own constituencies. |
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Southern Echo’s MS Educational Issues Charts These 12 charts reveal the distressing state of high school graduation rates and high school graduation rates for students who are “college ready” in the US, Mississippi and other states in the south and southwest regions. |
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Southern Echo Educational Issues Posters Southern Echo creates posters to visualize major developments in the work or to synthesize complex historical analysis. Community, public officials, educators and statewide community and professional educator organizations have used our posters in their work and often post them on the walls of their work places. |
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Brown Paper #2: Building Healthy Schools and Quality Education in Mississippi Prepared by the Mississippi Delta Catalyst RoundtableIn 2007 the Legislature created the Task Force on Children At-Risk to assess the public funding needed to address the educational needs of low-wealth children in under-resourced school districts. The Roundtable submitted Brown Paper #2 to the Task Force in a public hearing at which several community leaders in the Roundtable made a 35-minute slide show presentation of the key elements in the report. The report was originally submitted to the MS Dept. of Education regarding dropout prevention issues. |
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Justice Funding Paper “Justice Funding” goes beyond “equity funding” that equalizes the funding among school districts, and beyond “adequate funding” that improves the delivery of education in all school districts. Justice funding requires that sufficient funding be provided to remedy the impact of past deprivations in the schools based on race and class. |
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Positive Behavior Intervention Programs, a healthy schools strategy, prepared by the MS Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse 2 JailhouseWhen schools push children out of school, onto the streets and into the pipeline from schoolhouse to jailhouse administrators deny to children the education to which they are entitled and undermine their future productivity as citizens. In school positive behavior intervention programs teach students and educators strategies to resolve disputes and conflicts in nonviolent productive ways, rather than the traditional resort to authority and power focused on submission, punishment and exclusion. |
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Visualizing the Mississippi State Budget, 2005 This analysis explores the true size of the Mississippi budget and its different components about which most people are unaware. The budget controls much of state policy, but only a few people in the state know how it works. The Mississippi Economic Policy Center has a more up-to-date analysis in its 2007 Taxpayer’s Guide to the Mississippi Budget. |
| Census & Voting: | |
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Southern Echo’s Census Maps Southern Echo creates these census maps to enable community stakeholders at a variety of levels to visualize the complex relationship between census counting, and funding for education, public works, and many other government projects that affect our lives. |
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Southern Echo’s Census & Redistricting Flyers Southern Echo creates these census flyers to enable community stakeholders at a variety of levels to visualize the complex relationship between census counting, and funding for education, public works, and many other government projects that affect our lives. |
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Census and Redistricting: a 5-year Program of Work (2008 - 2013) Southern Echo is building a 5-year training, technical and legal assistance program to be undertaken in 10 states in the south and southwest to fight for a full and accurate census count in 2010 and the creation of fair political districts at all levels of government from 2011 to 2013. |
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Voting Rights Act Amicus Brief This Amicus Brief, joined by Southern Echo and filed in the United States Supreme Court in March 2009, contains the arguments being made by supporters of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act against attack in the Texas case. |
Redistricting: |
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Mississippi 2010-2011 Click here to find a variety of materials that specifically relate to the Mississippi 2011 redistricting, which will be posted as they are created. |
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Redistricting Materials and Tools Click here to find general legal, political, and training materials regarding Redistricting. |
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Department of Justice Click here to find legal analyses, regulations and other US Dept. of Justice materials related to the redistricting process. |
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Historical Analysis Click here to find analyses, studies, and reports regarding the history of redistricting in Mississippi and other parts of the nation. |
| Southern Echo’s Newsletter ‘Struggles’: | |
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Southern Echo’s Newsletter “Struggles”” Struggles, our newsletter provides highlights about many of the most interesting parts of our efforts to empower communities and impact the formation and implementation of public policy. Struggles is supposed to be published quarterly, but in some years we miss the target. We intend to do better. |
| Southern Echo Training Manuals: | |
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Dismantling the Achievement Gap - 2007 Each year the Conference of Education Stakeholders to Dismantle the Student Achievement Gap focuses on core problems and remedies needed to create a quality public education accessible to all children in Mississippi. The Manual provides analysis, charts and maps to generate critical thinking about the achievement gap as the intended consequence of conscious policies. |
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Pathways Out of Poverty - 2008 This training manual focuses on the historical underpinnings of extensive poverty in the African American communities as the intended consequence of conscious policies and how community organizing strategies are being used in Mississippi to dismantle the structures that were created to maintain these invidious policies. |