Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

On Feb. 3, the Senate Education Committee unanimously voted down House Bill 2, legislation that proposed a significant expansion of school choice in Mississippi. The debate that followed fell into well-worn lines of support and opposition.

However, I believe Mississippi could benefit from a more nuanced conversation about the matter. 

Mississippi’s public schools remain central to our education landscape, serving the vast majority of our children. They will continue to play that role regardless of new choice initiatives. Any debate that we have must be grounded in the fact that public schools matter, and they deserve our best investments. 

At the same time, supporting the central role of public schools should not mean ignoring the experiences of families who believe their assigned school is not meeting their child’s needs. This fall, Mississippi First commissioned a survey of a representative sample of parents in counties with C-, D-, and F-rated school districts that do not currently have charter schools. The results were clear: 

● 60.24% of the parents surveyed believe that only some children—or no children at all—have access to high-quality schools in their community.

● Only 17.5% believe that all children in their community have access to high-quality schools. 

● 91.8% of all adults surveyed believe parents should have a choice in where their child goes to school.

This data also aligns closely with my own experience. I am a product of Mississippi public schools, and my family exercised school choice more than 20 years ago by moving to a different school district for one reason – so I could attend a higher-performing high school.

That decision profoundly shaped my life and gave me firsthand insight into the power of attending a high-quality school. It is also why I fight for all children to have access to strong schools and why I am intentional about the schools my own children attend, a privilege that too many families do not have. 

When I speak candidly with other parents who have means – and set politics aside – many will acknowledge there are schools where they would not send their own children. Yet for the children who attend those schools, there is often no alternative. That reality deserves honesty, not defensiveness. 

It was the reality for many of the friends I grew up with. While I went on to attend school in one of the highest-performing districts in the state, many of my peers remained in a district that was later placed under state control for six years after spending nearly a decade on academic probation due to persistently low performance.

At the time, the only other option in our community was a small private academy founded in 1964, when many white families left the public school system to avoid integration. As a Black child, that school was not a viable option for me, and it is unclear whether it would have offered stronger academic outcomes than the public system. The district served roughly 1,600 students, many of whom did not have the means to move to another district, even if they wanted to. 

That experience continues to shape how I approach this debate. Choice already exists in Mississippi, but it is uneven, often tied to zip code, race and income. The question before policymakers is not whether choice should exist, but how to design policies that make access to high-quality schools less dependent on privilege and more rooted in public purpose. I believe this moment calls for a more thoughtful conversation about choice, one designed with a vision of all Mississippi children thriving.

In today’s policy debate around school choice, three primary approaches have been proposed. They are:

● Education Savings Accounts (ESAs): The Education Savings Account model proposed in House Bill 2 would allow up to 12,500 students to receive public funds for private education expenses through Magnolia Student Accounts, with half of those accounts available to students not previously enrolled in public schools. This approach would direct public dollars to private and unaccredited schools with limited requirements for academic transparency, accountability or evidence of effectiveness.

● Public School Portability: Public school portability in Mississippi would allow students to attend a public school outside of their assigned district, contingent on acceptance by the receiving district. While this can expand options within the public system, equitable access depends on transparent admissions practices, available capacity, transportation and administrative coordination.

● Expanding Public Charter Schools: Expanding public charter schools would mean authorizing additional tuition-free public schools beyond the narrow set of districts currently eligible under state law, where only 10 charter schools operate. The proposal that has been put forth would allow them to open in any district with a D- or F-rated school. 

Recently, Mississippi First released a position statement in which we oppose ESAs which fall short of bringing forth a design that supports strong public schools and meaningful options for families.

We support public school portability with caution. We believe that its effectiveness greatly depends on implementation guided by a high commitment to equity, and we recognize its limitations on serving kids who are most underserved.

Mississippi First strongly supports the expansion of public charter schools because they are designed to expand opportunity while serving a public purpose. In fact, for more than 15 years, Mississippi First has advanced evidence-based reforms, including public charter schools, not because of ideology, but because design matters. Choice is valuable only when it improves outcomes for children and strengthens the broader system. 

Mississippi’s public charter schools were created as tools for education reform, offering public options that are both innovative and accountable. While not every charter school in the state has consistently performed at a high level, charters are held to the same academic accountability standards that have helped drive Mississippi’s recent gains.They cannot selectively enroll students, and they must demonstrate clear parent demand and community need to open and to stay open.

National research from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes shows that charter schools can produce stronger learning gains for low-income students than their assigned traditional public schools.

Mississippi’s charter sector is still relatively young, but the early evidence is encouraging. Six of the seven charter schools have state accountability scores ranking in the top half of schools in the districts they serve.  The remaining three charter schools are still expanding and have not yet reached state-tested grade levels.

Strengthening traditional public schools and supporting high-quality public charter schools to open in more places where students need them are not competing goals. They are complementary strategies for building a public education system that works for every Mississippi child.

The question before us is not whether to choose one or the other, but whether we are willing to support policies that honor both. 

Angela Bass is the executive director of Mississippi First, a nonpartisan education policy and advocacy organization focused on public education in Mississippi. Mississippi First supports high-quality early education programs, high-quality public charter schools and effective teachers and leaders in Mississippi public schools.