[lolinder]

Just to clarify to those reading the comments first, the political point he's making is not to ignore Mississippi just because it's Mississippi.

He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans at the end and is pretty clearly not a fan of the way either party is approaching education at the national level right now. He is drawing attention to the fact that some red states with historically bad schools have started pulling ahead of some blue states with historically good schools, but his interest is in making sure we learn from that, not scoring culture war points.

[dentemple]

> "He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans"

You left out the fact these warnings essentially boil down to: "Democrats need to stop being bad, and Republicans need to continue being good."

The political bias is clear as day in the article.

[lolinder]

That's not what he says. He dedicates most of the section that's directed at Republicans critiquing the administration's wholesale dismantling of the Department of Education and warning that they could run on education in the future if they, you know, didn't do that.

I think people just have an idea of what his political slant must be because he's defending the indefensible state of Mississippi.