Archive for February 2017

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted today to send the Dyslexia Scholarship expansion to the full Senate. House Bill 1046, which had previously cleared the Senate Education Committee, now faces a March 8 deadline for action in the Senate. The legislature authorized the Dyslexia Scholarship five years ago and to date hundreds of young students have…

Cena Holifield, the Executive Director of the 3-D School, recently penned a letter in support of House Bill 1046, pending legislation that would expand the Dyslexia Scholarship program. “I am requesting that you please support HB 1046 to expand services to Mississippi students with dyslexia,” Holifield wrote. The 3-D School was formed in 2008 in…

Mississippi has a dyslexia crisis. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in America and affects somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the population. This means there are thousands of Mississippi students with dyslexia, who without specialized therapy, will struggle to read and write. The good news is that dyslexia is very treatable if…

The state legislature approved the Dyslexia Therapy Scholarship program in 2012 to provide a new educational option for students with dyslexia. This program allows students to receive a scholarship worth about $5,000 to attend either a public school which is outside of their district or a private school that provides dyslexia services. In five years,…

Earlier today, the Senate Education Committee voted to expand the Dyslexia Therapy Scholarship program. House Bill 1046 now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee for action before heading to the full Senate. The deadline for committees to report on general bills originating in the other chamber is Tuesday, February 28. Under the proposed legislation: The…

Tucked behind the South 28th Avenue Baptist Church in Hattiesburg just a couple blocks from Forrest General Hospital sits a new school doing very special things. The TIDE School opened in 2015 and provides individualized educational planning for students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, anxiety disorders, and other specific learning disorders or impairments that…

Earlier this week Betsy DeVos was confirmed as United States Secretary of Education. As far as I can tell, district schools are still in operation, but that has not been confirmed. But you would not realize that with the hysteria from Senate Democrats and their allies in the teachers unions who ran a massive campaign…

Earlier today, Betsy DeVos was confirmed as United States Secretary of Education. Both Mississippi Senators, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker, supported her confirmation. DeVos is a long-time champion of education choice, devoting much of her life to the cause. She previously served as Chairman of the American Federation for Children, a national leader in the…

Empower Mississippi President Grant Callen released the following statement after Betsy DeVos was confirmed as United States Secretary of Education: “I congratulate Ms. DeVos on her confirmation as the next Secretary of Education. She is an entrepreneur, an innovator, and will bring fresh ideas to the nation’s top education post. Charter schools and school choice…

Nationwide charter school enrollment topped three million students this year. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an estimated 3.1 million students attend one of the more than 6,900 public charter schools during the 2016-2017 school year. This in an increase of approximately seven percent, or 200,000 students, over the past year. Over…