DETROIT — Rahm Emanuel, the former congressman, Chicago mayor, White House chief of staff and ambassador to Japan, has a message to Michigan and other states grappling with declining reading and math scores: be more like Mississippi.

That state went from 49th to top-10 for fourth-graders learning to read over more than a decade amid a science-of-reading approach focused on phonics and stricter school accountability policies. A handful of other southern Republican-controlled states have found similar gains of late — and Emanuel, a fixture in Democratic politics for decades, said Tuesday in Detroit that the rest of the nation should follow their lead. In Michigan, lawmakers have spent more money even as reading scores have declined.

"There's a lesson to learn," said Emanuel, who served under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. "If Mississippi is succeeding — I can say, the demographics are tough — but if you go from 49th to 9th, that tells us something. Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, also difficult demographics, they replicate it, they have success. This is not a one-off trick pony."

Emanuel is exploring a possible presidential bid in 2028 and was on a Michigan blitz early this week. He visited union members in Grand Rapids, attended Democratic candidate fundraisers and on Tuesday afternoon, participated in the onstage interview with Stephen Henderson, founder of BridgeDetroit. He was talking up Mississippi's reading outcomes after visiting that state several weeks ago, and has also been hitting the media circuit of late, doing extended interviews on NPR and several podcasts.

If he does make a run, it's clear education reform would be a central campaign message. The 66-year-old lamented how national leaders including President Donald Trump and governors aren't recognizing falling reading and math scores as a crisis: "You know more on the president's position on windmills than on education," he said.

He flagged data showing a declining rate of U.S. children reading at grade level and raised concerns over how it would affect the country's competitiveness worldwide given China's aggressive focus on increasing the quality of its education system.

Emanuel had other policy pitches to make in the education realm as well, including his proposal that veterans get a $10,000 signing bonus to go into the skilled trades.

"Jim Farley from Ford said, 'I've got about 5,000 jobs, six figures, with benefits, and I can't find anyone,'" he said, referring to the Ford CEO's concerns about a shortage in skilled-trade mechanic and technician positions.

One way to ensure more students are channeled into such fields after high school would be to mandate that they have a letter of acceptance from a college, a training program or the military before they get a high school diploma, Emanuel said. It's a tactic he said had worked when he was mayor of Chicago, ensuring kids had a plan to succeed beyond graduation.

Vocational training is one slice of education that Michigan is doing well, the former mayor later told The Detroit News, and was one of the reasons he wanted to visit the state — just as he wanted to see recently how Mississippi had pulled off its reading test score turnaround. In another three weeks, he plans to roll out additional policy proposals centered on community colleges.

"It's about education, I want to see the successes we have," he said of his recent trips. "But I do believe that there's nothing that ails us as a country that can't be fixed by what's working in the country. The answer's in front of us, we just don't want to grab it."

An additional area affecting children that the former Obama chief of staff believes desperately needs policy reform: social media.

On Tuesday, he advocated for stricter national policies as some other countries have implemented that would prevent younger children from using Instagram and similar apps.

"We have turned our adolescents over to an algorithm, and the adults are losing to an algorithm," said the father of three, later adding: "The government has to step in on the side of parents, and help them out."

Despite touring around the country, attending campaign events, speaking to groups like the Detroit Economic Club and podcast hosts — and test-driving what sound like potential campaign trail catchphrases along the way — Emanuel didn't address his interest in higher office head-on.

"I don't need another title," he told The News. "I love fly fishing ... I don't need this. I think America needs someone who's going to tell them the truth. That's what I'm going to do."

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