Few can deny public school education as a whole in Mississippi is in a world of hurt.

The state mandates programs and ever changing standardized testing — three different standardized tests in three years — and uses those different tests to issue a grade to the school district. Yet, it underfunds public school education by hundreds of millions of dollars.

By the way, standardized testing, according to the non-profit group Fed Up with 50th, is big business. That group reports Mississippi will pay Questar Assessment Inc., the latest company chosen to provide standardized tests, more than $13 million this year. The 10-year contract between the state and Questar is worth $110 million, according to Fed Up with 50th.

The group also reports testing companies spent $20 million in the last five years lobbying for additional testing in public schools.

Further, our current Republican-led Legislature seems to have no plan for providing improved funding for public schools. Indeed, such doesn’t seem to even be on the radar of many of the GOP leadership.

While the outlook statewide is dire, we can take heart in Vicksburg and Warren County that school officials are working diligently to improve the education offered our students.

In fact, many in our business community have partnered with the school district to help fund some of those programs, like Leader in Me, which was expanded to nine schools this year.

The Leader in Me program works to foster responsibility, integrity and leadership in children at an early age, knowing those values will pay dividends to the student and the community in the future.

Further, the advent of River City Early College High School, is serving a niche here by offering students who are college bound a way to get those core courses out of the way, earning a two-year associates degree through dual enrollment with Hinds Community College, as well as a high school diploma when they graduate.

The new high school is located at Hinds’ Vicksburg campus, and students who complete the program and go on to college could save upwards of $40,000, depending on where they choose to continue their college education.

The Vicksburg Warren County School District is also starting at an early age to focus students on thinking about career options, and to prepare its students for either college or employment upon graduation.

That’s exactly the direction the school district should be headed, and a direction our state leaders should notice.Turning around a school district is a little like turning a barge in the river. It takes time and lots of effort. Given that time, we’re confident administrators, faculty and staff in the Vicksburg Warren School District will get turned around.