Plan tries to slow brain drain from Mississippi
Mississippi has a bright-lights-big-city problem, with a significant numbers of college graduates earning their degrees in this mostly rural state and then departing for bigger paychecks and expanded cultural opportunities in Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville and beyond.
Summer reading programs keep kids intellectually engaged
School’s out for summer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean no more pencils, no more books for local students, many of whom are already immersed in reading assignments for the upcoming school year.
While students may groan and parents may wonder what happened to the carefree vacations they remember, educators, backed by statistics, favor summer reading as a way to prevent “brain drain” — the loss of critical skills attained in the classroom and shoved in the locker when the dismissal bell rings each summer.