Demographic change is the obvious explanation.
Mississippi is one of the recent education success stories though.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Anecdotally all the kids these days seem equally messed up. It could be that the Chinese and Indian kids are propping up the locals.
Score changes look about the same across performance percentiles and ethnicities. That suggests it's a systemic issue unrelated to population makeup. While I'd be interested to see regional and economic breakdowns, it's certainly far from obvious it's a result of demographic change, especially after such a short period of time.