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https://www.city-journal.org/article/mississippi-louisiana-alabama-education-schools-southern-states
Why Southern States Are Outperforming Others in Education
Students need orderly classrooms to learn.
/ Eye on the News / Education
Dec 22 2025
The education story of the year has been the rCLSouthern Surge.rCY An
intrepid group of southern states have led the nation in post-pandemic recovery. In a decade, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the
nation on fourth-grade reading scores, despite remaining the poorest
state. According to HarvardrCOs 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard,
Louisiana is the only state to recover to 2019 achievement levels in
both reading and math, while Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in
fourth-grade math alone. All other states continue to lag prior
achievement levels.
Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of
commonsense reforms: early literacy laws that require the use of
phonics, the tightening of retention and promotion policies, universal literacy screeners in early grades, and rigorous curricula. But another
factor may be these statesrCO strict disciplinary policies. The states
seeing the greatest gains academically are also the ones doing the most
to bring order and stability to their schools.
A teacher can use the best curriculum, and states can make schools use
the best instructional methods, but if classrooms are chaotic, then
students will not learn. The presence of a misbehaving peer causes other students to act out, dilutes instruction, and drives down achievement
for other students.
Despite this, blue and red states frame discipline differently.
AlabamarCOs regulatory codes, for example, open with a statement that rCLstudents be allowed to learn in a safe classroom setting where order
and discipline are maintained,rCY and that rCLevery child in AlabamarCY is entitled to rCLthe right to learn in a non-disruptive environment.rCY Boundaries and order are treated as inherent goods.
Many blue states, however, view school discipline as a necessary evil,
to be limited as much as possible. California prohibits the use of
suspensions for low-level misbehavior such as willful disobedience. Massachusetts imposes prerequisites on the use of suspensions, telling administrators that they rCLshall not use suspension from school as a consequence until alternative remedies have been tried and documented.rCY
In practice, this makes suspension a last resort rather than a baseline
tool of classroom management.
These different approaches show in the data, beginning with how likely
schools are to use punishments. For example, though Alabama and
Washington report incidents to the Department of EducationrCOs CRDC at
similar rates, Alabama suspends students roughly two to three times as
often as Washington. Or consider Louisiana and the District of Columbia,
the areas with the highest incident rates in 2021rCo2022. Though D.C.
reported about a 50 percent higher incident rate than Louisiana, it was
seven times less likely to expel students.
One reason for this discrepancy could be that states experience violent behavior differently. Where violence is more prevalent, administrators
may feel greater urgency to intervene quickly and efficiently.
But this likely only partly explains why many states still struggle with violence and disorder. The latest available data for schools reporting rCLwidespread disorderrCY between the 2019rCo2020 and 2021rCo2022 school years show that Southern schools remained stable. By contrast, disorder grew
at schools in the Northeast, Midwest, and Western regions and was also
much higher than at those in the South.
Approaches in red states differ in another key aspect: their schools
preserve broad discretion to enforce rules early, before small problems
become big ones. Louisiana law says that teachers may rCLtake disciplinary actionrCY against any student or behavior that rCLinterferes with an orderly education process.rCY Administrators may not return that student to class until they employ one of several rCLdisciplinary measures.rCY Even small behaviors can trigger a consequence, and three removals can trigger a
parent meeting and more severe disciplinary action.
States like Alabama and Tennessee have recently spearheaded laws that
give teachers more authority to remove unruly students from the
classroom and compel administrators to impose more consequences. These
laws faced opposition from equity advocates, but they go a long way
toward explaining why classroom disorder didnrCOt worsen in the South, and
why educational outcomes for poor students have improved so dramatically thererCothe very thing equity hawks claim to want.
Students deserve orderly and safe classrooms, and that means educators shouldnrCOt treat discipline as a necessary evil of last resort. If we
want academic recovery to endure, we need to build the behavioral
foundations that make learning possible. Education decision-makers who
truly care about student outcomes would be wise to review their
discipline policies.
Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the
Manhattan Institute. Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director
of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.
Photo: Kawee Srital-on / Moment via Getty Images
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ShirleyUJest
2 months ago edited
Blue states believe discipline is racist since statistically more
minorities receive penalties for poor behavior, so their answer is to
drop expectations of classroom decorum altogether. It's sad...nothing
more racist than assuming minorities can't behave than having the same expectations for all students.
also see
Southern states showing big educational gains, NYT op-ed says
(Alabama, Ms. & La.)
Fox News
2 days ago
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