The Mississippi Miracle

“Thank god for Mississippi.” It’s a phrase that is almost exclusively used sarcastically, an expression of relief that no matter how bad your state is, at least it’s not Mississippi. Mississippi ranks among the worst states in key metrics of quality of life like food security, poverty, murder, maternal mortality, and more. It’s a poster child for poor governance, and the latest news out of the state is that a proposed bill to allow bounty hunters to track down undocumented immigrants failed to pass. At the same time, Mississippi is the most racially polarized state in the country, filled with hundreds of thousands of people who do not vote for Republicans and who suffer the most under bad policy.

All this is to say that it is worth celebrating the things that Mississippi does right, and notwithstanding its various issues, Mississippi is showing a way forward in one of the most important measures of a state: the education of its children.

Every few years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is conducted among 4th and 8th graders throughout the country. It is the most prominent measure of student achievement, and after a dip in 2022 compared to 2019, educators and policy experts anxiously awaited the January 29 release of the 2024 data. Unfortunately, the nationwide results were not particularly encouraging; while math scores rose overall with 4th graders, reading scores fell among both 4th and 8th graders.

At first glance, Mississippi’s performance by this metric is not particularly outstanding. Math and science scores among 4th graders mostly rose by small amounts, while there was very little change for 8th graders outside of small increases in the number who were proficient or advanced in math. Mississippi now has a math score two points above the national average and a reading score four points below. But these stats mask a larger shift that has taken place over the past decade-plus.

In 2013, Mississippi had a 4th grade reading rating of 209, making it 49th in the country by that metric. 41% of children read at a level below “basic”, in contrast to only 21% who were proficient. Fast forward to 2024, and Mississippi sits at 219. To put that in context, the best rated state is the perennial top performer Massachusetts, at 225, while the lowest rated is West Virginia. Mississippi has moved from a bottom-dweller to within shouting distance of the top spot.

The jump in proficiency has been equally impressive, as 32% of children are now proficient, compared to 35% below “basic”. That’s still cause for concern, with considerable room for improvement necessary, but a 50% improvement in the number of students proficient in reading in eleven years is no mean feat.

In fact, Mississippi has experienced the largest increase in NAEP scores among 4th graders, for both reading and math, of any state in the country.

What’s more, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that student performance is being underrated in Mississippi. Over the last several years, the Urban Institute has taken the NAEP results and adjusted them by demographics to assess which states are the greatest over and underperformers. The argument is that certain states have demographic makeups that make them more likely to have higher test scores: higher incomes, more parents with college degrees, access to free meals, etc… Massachusetts, for example, has the highest median income of any state and over 50% of citizens 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, the most outside of DC. Student achievement will naturally be higher because of that.

I’ll give you one guess which state is the top performer once demographic adjustments are applied. This is true not only for 4th grade reading and math, but also 8th grade math. On 8th grade reading, Mississippi is in 4th.

So, what exactly is Mississippi doing right? At first blush, it’s tremendously hard to believe that a state that pays its teachers worse than all but two other states is comparatively succeeding in its education program. And to be clear, its refusal to pay teachers what they’re worth is absolutely not the reason they’ve made these great strides. Rather, the turning point was the 2013 passage of the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA).

The LBPA constituted a few parts, including an emphasis on teaching kids to read starting in kindergarten, identifying kids from K-3 who most needed extra attention, holding back those few 3rd graders who failed to demonstrate sufficient aptitude to advance to 4th grade, and requiring teachers to learn how to teach “the science of reading.”

These latter two efforts were the most controversial steps. Grade retention has both its proponents and its detractors. Those who oppose it traditionally point at studies that show short-term boosts, before a drop in performance from those who were retained, such that in the end they perform comparably to their peers who were not retained or even worse.

But this is hardly set in stone. Other studies, done particularly on the effect of retention on 3rd graders, show a different story, with short and long-term improvements among those who were retained compared to peers who were not. A study of the first Mississippi 3rd grade cohort to experience the LBPA also found that when they entered 6th grade, the retained students were achieving at a level far above their peers.

And Mississippi doesn’t merely abandon students who repeat a grade, trusting that retention alone will solve the problem. The LBPA requires intensive intervention for students who are retained, and in 2016, the law was amended to create individual reading plans for struggling students. In 2019, the standards for promotion to 4th grade were raised, leading to a temporary jump in the number of retained students, but in the years since it’s trended downwards. The upshot of this is that over time, even as Mississippi raises the bar for moving onto 4th grade, fewer people are being retained. We’ll have to wait until the spring to see if Mississippi experiences rising graduation rates (the first class of Kindergarteners after the LBPA should graduate in 2025), but all signs suggest that the policies are working!

Feelings around grade retention pale in comparison to the ire over the very strategies we used to teach kids to read. I’ll probably cover the “Reading Wars” at some point in the future, but the short version is that over the past two centuries, advocates of different ways of teaching reading have been fighting pitched battles, with policy and public opinion shifting over time. The most recent iteration has been decades in the making, pitting the advocates of “balanced literacy” against the legions in favor of the “science of reading”.

Balanced literacy was ascendant for an unfortunate amount of time, with a philosophy that emphasized learning to read based on story and theme. The idea was that this would inculcate a love for reading among students, as opposed to putting them through the boring repetition of sounding out words. The only problem with this approach: that boring repetition, also known as phonics, is the best way to teach students how to read.

By requiring teachers to learn the science of reading, Mississippi was an early (re)-adopter of phonics. Over the past ten years, the backlash against balanced literacy has been swift, with one of its top proponents, Lucy Calkins, going from superstar to public enemy number one overnight. And 40 states, as well as DC, have passed laws pushing for science of reading in the last several years.

Close readers of this post might remember something I mentioned at the beginning that is not at all encouraging: while Mississippi reading scores are improving, the nation’s are falling. It is not hyperbolic to say that reading levels are at their lowest in the 21st century, and that while Covid made things worse, it is hardly the sole cause. I won’t mince words here, this is awful.

Mississippi’s success is hardly a silver lining when the state of student achievement is so porous, but it can provide lessons that other states should follow. Despite the poverty, segregation, and comparatively low levels of school investment in Mississippi, the state has still made progress. And it’s hardly resting on its laurels because it recognizes there’s far more work to be done; a bipartisan bill that would expand the LBPA through 8th grade just passed the House Education Committee. Some states have followed their lead, but every state should do so. They have the resources to replicate it, if only they have the bravery and leadership to get it done.

Mississippi’s problems are massive, and its politicians routinely act in dangerous and cruel ways, including in their education policy. But when it comes to the single, crucial topic of teaching kids how to read, one of the most necessary and important things a government can do, I think we can all agree.

Thank god for Mississippi.