The legislature finds and determines that the quality of public education and its effect upon the social, cultural and economic enhancement of the people of Mississippi is a matter of public policy, the object of which is the education and performance of its children and youth. The legislature hereby declares the following to be the policy of the State of Mississippi:
That the students, parents, general citizenry, local schoolteachers and administrators, local governments, local school boards, and state government have a joint and shared responsibility for the quality of education delivered through the public education system in the State of Mississippi;
To produce a functionally literate school population;
To ensure that all students master the most essential parts of a basic education;
To establish, raise and maintain educational standards;
To improve the quality of education by strengthening it and elevating its goals;
To provide quality education for all school-age children in the state;
That excellence and high achievement of all students should be the ultimate goal;
To encourage the common efforts of students, parents, teachers, administrators and business and professional leaders for the establishment of specific goals for performance;
To improve instructional and administrative quality, to relate the education community to other policymakers, to achieve increased competency among students, teachers and administrators, to provide for continuing professional development for teachers, counselors and administrators, to assure that the budget process, the planning function and the allocation of personnel of the state department of education are commensurate with its educational goals;
That the return on public education which is the single largest investment for the state be the effectiveness of the delivery system and the product it is designed to produce;
That the investment in public education can be justified on the basis of the economic benefits that will accrue both to the individual and to society, recognizing that the return on such investment is long term and dramatic progress is not immediate;
That emphasis must be placed upon early mastery of the skills necessary to success in school and that quality, performance-based early childhood education programs are an essential element of a comprehensive education system;
That local school districts and their public schools be required to account for the product of their efforts;
That the children of this state receive a period of instruction sufficient to train each in the basic educational skills adequate for the student to take his or her place in society and make a contribution as a citizen of this state, and that all children be encouraged to continue their education until they have completed high school;
To establish an accreditation system based upon measurable elements in school known to be related to instructional effectiveness, to establish a credible process for measuring and rating schools, to establish a method for monitoring continued performance, and to provide for a state response when performance is inadequate;
That the teachers of this state, to the extent possible, receive salaries that are at least equal to the average of the salaries received by teachers in the southeastern United States.