- Graduation rates drop in Miss., By Marquita Brown, July 12, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “To encourage her son to stay in school, Kimberly Smith would use herself as an example. She only had a sixth-grade education. At times the family had no electricity, no food and sometimes no place to stay. ‘This is why you need to go to school,’ Smith would tell her son, Carlos. ‘You want to live like this the rest of your life? Or you want to do something about it?’ Carlos graduated this year as Wingfield High School salutatorian with numerous scholarships, including national awards, and will attend Jackson State University in the fall. Kimberly Smith represents an element education leaders say is needed to improve state graduation and dropout rates – parental involvement. Mississippi’s graduation rate for the Class of 2009 dipped to 71.4 percent from 72 percent, according to numbers released from the state Department of Education on Thursday. The drop was greater in Jackson Public Schools…”
- Dropouts: Budget strains hit weakest, Editorial, July 12, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “In a competitive world, the lack of a high school diploma is an almost unsurmountable barrier to success. Yet, Mississippi still struggles with its high school graduation and dropout rates. The state Department of Education reports that graduation rates dropped slightly last year – from 72 percent to 71.4 percent. The state’s dropout rate increased slightly – from 16 percent to 16.7 percent. The negative trend, while slight, comes at a time when the state has been emphasizing high school dropout prevention. Worse, it could show a more vulnerable area as funding for education is being cut, putting a strain on districts seeking to provide help for students who are at-risk…”
Tag: Mississippi
Gulf Oil Spill and Low-Wage Workers
Don’t ignore low-income spill victims, advocates urge BP, By Deborah Barfield Berry, June 26, 2010, USA Today: “Vicky Townley is waiting to hear whether BP will compensate her for tip income she says she’s lost because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. ‘Things are so slow we’re basically living from paycheck to paycheck, which is not very much,’ said Townley, a bartender in Gulf Shores, Ala., who filed her lost-wages claim three weeks ago. Before the spill, she said, she earned $60 a day in tips during the summer months, which helped in the long slog to rebound from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. ‘Things were just starting to pick up,’ she said. ‘Then the recession, then the oil. What next?’ Gulf Coast groups representing low-income workers say they want to make sure BP’s claims process doesn’t overlook workers like Townley in the rush to compensate fishermen and other high-priority spill victims…”
Access to Health Care – Mississippi
- The Mississippi Delta’s healthcare blues, By Noam N. Levey, June 3, 2010, Los Angeles Times: ” This crumbling Delta town, set amid cotton fields, abandoned railroad tracks and cypress-studded bayous, is a hard place. So hard that the plaintive sound of a local musician drawing a knife blade across the strings of his guitar gave birth to the blues here a century ago. So hard that a Roman Catholic nun named Anne Brooks has struggled for the last 27 years to keep a medical clinic open for the poor. ‘It’s a pretty hand-to-mouth existence,’ said Brooks, 71, a physician with a wry sensibility and a profane streak. Brooks earned a medical degree at age 44 before coming to the Mississippi Delta to open the Tutwiler Clinic with the blessing of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. She sees the nation’s new healthcare law as a potentially happy turn in a long, hard journey. The measure provides hundreds of billions of dollars to help states expand medical insurance for the poor and pay doctors like Brooks, nearly half of whose patients have no coverage. But there’s a good chance this story will end with another difficult twist in the road for Brooks and for Tutwiler…”
- Miss. looks to Iran for rural health care model, By Sheila Byrd (AP), June 2, 2010, Washington Post: “Scratch-poor towns in the Mississippi Delta once shared more in common with rural Iran – scarce medical supplies, inaccessible health care and high infant mortality rates – than with most of the U.S. Then things in Iran got better. Since the 1980s, rural Iranians have been able to seek treatment at health houses, informal sites set up in small communities as the first stop for medical care, rather than an emergency room. They’re staffed by citizens, not doctors, and the focus is on preventive care. Infant deaths have dropped from 200 per 1,000 births to 26. With the Delta’s rate 10 times worse than Iran’s, a group of volunteers is traveling to Iran this month to get a crash course in how health houses work…”