Is Mississippi Ready for Government Funded Pre-K Education?

Only 20% of Mississippi 4th and 8th graders test proficient in the three R's. Reading Writing and Arithmetic. MPB's Patty Davis reports on the efforts of one group that wants to move Mississippi off the bottom in education.

With tight budgets and an increasing demand for state dollars, Legislators often fund state agencies and programs on a year to year basis. But when it comes to education, a year to year funding mechanism does not seem to produced long term improvements.

Barker: Does there need to be state commitment? Absolutely. The question is how do we most efficiently do that with the capacity that we already have.

Representative Toby Barker of Hattiesburg was one of three lawmakers at the Capitol Thursday who listened to a presentation by Mississippi First - a non-partisan, nonprofit organization promoting government funded pre-K education. Mississippi First's Rachel Hicks says the state has been at the bottom of the education ladder, since those statistics began in the 70's.

Hicks: We are going to continue to be there unless we make a commitment to do every single research proven thing that we can to give our kids an advantage and high quality pre-kindergarten is one of the most regarded interventions for kids to enable them to be successful in high school and beyond.

High school teacher, Angela Wheeler says, trying to catch up with early learning skills just doesn't work.

Wheeler: And I see that in alot of my high school students, that, they have math skills on a third and forth grade level... lots of them. We've been trying to catch them up, starting in kindergarten, first grade. They have high school intervention, they have middle school ramp-up programs. But we haven't tried high quality early childhood education. So lets give that a try. And it's been proven to work.

According to research by Mississippi First, government funded pre-K education would cost the state about 156 million dollars a year, but over the long term, would result in a seven to one return on the dollar. Patty Davis, MPB News.