Mississippi Passed California in Reading. Here's the Law They Wrote | Ep. 286

American students fell three quarters of a school year behind in reading and math between 2018 and 2025. They now trail China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the UK, Canada and Australia. The skills dropping fastest are the ones the AI economy rewards: evaluating sources, connecting information, thinking critically. Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers walk through three reports released this month. PISA found "hasty reading" has doubled, with nearly 10% of students now reading fast and wrong. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute found 76% of high schoolers use school devices for something other than school every day, and 26% use AI during quizzes and tests. The GAO found 19% of districts closed a school last year over a plumbing failure, a flood, or a 110-degree classroom. Then there's Mississippi. Long ranked at the bottom, it copied Florida's third-grade reading law, set a passing threshold students have to clear, and tested new elementary teachers on the science of reading. Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in reading and sits well ahead of California. The countries holding their scores steady share one trait: stricter device discipline in the classroom. (00:00) Mississippi is excelling and California is not (01:43) PISA: US scores fall three quarters of a year of learning (02:33) "Hasty reading" doubles, and the countries it skipped (05:08) Chromebooks stay at school, LA County caps devices at 10 hours a week (06:26) Fordham: 76% admit daily illicit device use, 26% use AI on tests (07:47) The technology was built for the teacher, not the student (09:08) GAO: 1 in 5 districts closed a school over facilities (09:58) The problem is not money, it's the approach (11:57) Mississippi copies Florida's third-grade reading law (15:16) 44% of below-average SAT scorers get A's 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧'𝐬 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 👇 📕 𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐰𝐞𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐫 The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon (2026) https://amzn.to/3LcenCd 📗 𝐄𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐄𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election (2018) https://a.co/d/cQZzBlT?tag=governmacco01-20 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧 👇 🌐 https://thedrilldown.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@TheDrillDown 📸 https://www.instagram.com/TheDrillDown1 𝕏 https://twitter.com/TheDrillDown1 📘 https://facebook.com/DrillDownTV 🟢 https://rumble.com/c/TheDrillDown1 🟣 https://truthsocial.com/@DrillDownwithSchweizer 🎧 Listen on the go: https://thedrilldown.podbean.com Also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart and Amazon Music. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 👇 The Drill Down is produced by the 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞, a nonpartisan investigative research organization. No anonymous sources. No government funds. We follow the money and publish what it shows. 🌐 https://accountabilityinstitute.org/ 𝕏 https://x.com/Govt_Acct_Inst 📸 https://www.instagram.com/govt_acct_inst ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@Govt_Acct_Inst 📘 https://www.facebook.com/GovernmentAccountabilityInstitute 📖 More from Peter Schweizer: https://peterschweizer.com 📖 The Invisible Coup: https://theinvisiblecoup.com