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.

For the past six years, I’ve had a front row seat to some stunning achievements in Mississippi public education.

I moved from New York City to Jackson in 2019, which was just in time to witness Mississippi trailblazing a new approach to literacy instruction and becoming number one in the nation in fourth-grade reading gains.

With the onset of COVID-19, Mississippi continued to impress by affirming the state’s commitment to public schools as the gold standard in education. At a time when many states began redirecting taxpayer dollars to fund private school choice schemes, Mississippi instead chose to prioritize public education with a $230 million investment in a new, more equitable public school funding formula.

But from my vantage point of conducting education research and occasionally lobbying the state Legislature, there is one particular achievement I think deserves a second look.

In 2022, state lawmakers made an historic investment to combat Mississippi’s critical teacher shortage. The idea was simple: incentivize the recruitment and retention of educators by passing the largest teacher pay raise in state history.

The strategy worked. Going into the 2022-2023 school year, the average teacher salary increased by $5,452 annually, a raise of about 11%. That year, according to federal data, the Mississippi Department of Education issued 4,520 teaching licenses to new educators, a 63% increase over the prior year and higher than any year since at least 2009-2010 (the earliest year for which data is available). This influx of new talent helped reduce the number of statewide teacher vacancies from 3,036 in 2021-2022 to 2,593 in 2022-2023.

Three years later, Mississippi’s critical teacher shortage is resurgent. Vacancies are once again near the peak of 2021-2022 (MDE reported 2,964 vacancies in 2024-2025), and about two-thirds of Mississippi school districts are now classified as “geographical critical shortage areas.” According to data from the Southern Regional Education Board, teacher turnover in Mississippi has spiked and is now well above the regional average. 

As policymakers seek solutions to address the chronic shortage of educators in Mississippi classrooms, they would do well to learn from their own previous success.

There are a number of overlapping factors that influence teachers’ career plans. But researchers and public education advocates have long argued that the educator pipeline isn’t rocket science. Like professionals in any other industry, teachers are rational economic actors who respond to monetary incentives. After years of offering the lowest teacher pay in America, lawmakers reasoned that a significant pay raise in 2022 would make a dent in Mississippi’s critical teacher shortage. They were right.

But while legislators rightfully campaigned on this investment during the 2023 state election cycle, they have since governed with the opposite approach.

One problem is inaction. Lawmakers have not passed a teacher pay raise since 2022. As a result, the buying power of that raise has since been erased by inflation. In that time, neighboring states have also passed significant pay raises of their own. Mississippi may have briefly outpaced the Southeastern average for starting teacher pay in 2022, but first-year teachers in Mississippi can now cross the river into Arkansas and immediately increase their annual salary from $41,500 to $50,000. The average teacher salary in Mississippi is once again the lowest in the nation.

Another problem has been an intentional effort to reduce teacher compensation. Tucked in House Bill 1, the tax overhaul bill that passed the Legislature last month, was a landmark reform to the Public Employees’ Retirement System (known as PERS) that will offer less retirement benefits to future public employees, including teachers. According to an analysis of the changes made to PERS in House Bill 1 by the nonprofit Equable, the newly created “Tier 5” public employees hired after March 1, 2026, who work for at least 20 years, will receive, on average, a 23% reduction in projected retirement benefits (a decrease of roughly $168,382) compared to current employees.

At a time when Mississippi school districts already struggle to recruit and retain educators, whittling away at their compensation package has troubling implications for Mississippi’s critical teacher shortage. Of particular concern is the impact of weaker retirement benefits and stagnant pay on teacher turnover and districts’ ability to retain veterans of the classroom. 

This has become the “leakiest” point in Mississippi’s educator pipeline: teacher turnover has spiked since the pandemic, and schools—particularly in lower-performing districts—are increasingly relying on a revolving door of relatively inexperienced teachers to staff their classrooms.

Teaching is a difficult job with a steep learning curve. Effective teachers don’t just know their subject; they know their students and their community. That takes time. Unsurprisingly, research shows that additional classroom experience translates to increased effectiveness and improved student outcomes. But Mississippi school districts are now losing, on average, nearly 1 in 4 teachers each year (the average district turnover rate was 23.3% in 2022-2023). Cutting retirement benefits under “Tier 5” may soon accelerate this trend. Without the prospect of a guaranteed pension with a cost-of-living adjustment, the next generation of educators have lost a major incentive to spend their career in a Mississippi classroom.

Like many Mississippi teachers, I am also preparing to pursue a professional opportunity elsewhere.. I was recently offered a job in my hometown of Montpelier, Vermont, and I will soon be making a very bittersweet departure from the Magnolia State.

But before I leave, I want to emphasize the most pressing takeaway from six years of education policy research: The number one obstacle preventing Mississippi from becoming a national leader in education is a critical shortage of teachers across the state. It is true that Mississippi has made progress with curricular reforms such as requiring instruction rooted in the science of reading. But policies like this only go so far. Human capital is the most important resource in education, and here the state is failing. With neither competitive pay nor competitive benefits, it’s easy to see why.

To unlock the potential of Mississippi public schools, state leaders need to give teachers a reason to call Mississippi home.

Toren Ballard, a former teacher, spent the last six years as an education policy researcher and an advocate for public schools in Mississippi. He is joining the Vermont Agency of Education as the director of communications and policy.