A report finds that Mississippi’s public education system is among the most racially just nationwide.
The WalletHub report released Tuesday ranked the state 17th nationally for racial equality in education. Mississippi has the 8th best ranking among Southern states. The ranking has additional significance given the state’s long history of racial disparities in public education.
The state had to be forced to desegregate schools 16 years after Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954. As a result, there was a mass exodus of white students leaving public schools to attend private schools. Dozens of Mississippi’s most prominent private institutions were founded between 1969 and 1971 to accommodate them. Today, these schools have Black Mississippians and other minorities as part of their student body.
Mississippi has 30 school districts with desegregation orders: DOJ
However, white Mississippians are still statistically more likely to have high school diplomas, higher standardized test scores, and bachelor’s degrees than Black Mississippians. For instance, there is an over 27.1% gap among Black and white students who achieved the state’s average ACT score.
WalletHub also emphasized the racial equality that exists in the state now. The educational disparities among Black and white Mississippians for the above metrics are still lower than in most U.S. states, according to WalletHub. Mississippi also has the third lowest gap in high school graduation rates among Black and white students nationally at 3.8%.
Despite recent progress, integration is still a problem in many public schools. Seventy years after Brown was decided, 30 school districts in Mississippi are currently under desegregation orders. However, these orders exist in 12 other states in the Northeast, South, and Midwest.
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