Mississippi Celebrates Major Educational Victory
It’s rare to see a comeback story as strong as that of Mississippi students.
According to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Mississippi fourth-graders, when adjusted for demographics, are ranked as the nation’s top performers in reading and second in math. Mississippi’s dead-last ranking in the United States in overall education was once a familiar statistic, but recent test scores reveal the incredible new reality of academic prosperity for students in the state. Graduation rates have skyrocketed to about 10% higher than the national average. Most students, including those in poverty, have moved from being ranked at the bottom to placing somewhere near the middle.
Victories of this caliber do not happen by accident or overnight. They are the result of hard work, dedication, and years of legislative battles and implementation.
Progress began after the 2013 passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), legislation that included provisions for the third-grade “reading gate,” requiring students to demonstrate reading proficiency in order to be promoted to the next grade. LBPA also included provisions for school choice, early childhood education, scholarships for dyslexic students, and teacher-education reforms. The genius behind this law comes from its ability to reach students when it counts and identifies K–3 students who need additional reading help as early as possible. Students not proficient in reading by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school – and high school dropouts are not eligible for 90% of jobs in the U.S. economy.
When I decided to take on major education legislation reform, there were plenty of skeptics. Opposing groups thought that holding students back a year would make things worse. Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a nationally recognized expert in education policy, claimed that the third-grade reading gate would harm students. “In the long term,” she said, “the dropout rate in Mississippi will increase as those third graders who were held back become further disconnected from school.” Boy, was she wrong!
Despite widespread resistance across the media, I was determined to help students learn to read. Headlines at the time included: “More than 5,000 Mississippi third graders could be held back this year for low reading scores” (Hechinger Report); “Mississippi Third Grade Gate: Fear of Failure” (Clarion Ledger); “Critics Blast ‘Third-Grade Gate’ Tests” (Jackson Free Press); “As Mississippi delivers the bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed out parents say there must be a better way” (Hechinger Report). But the Mississippi State Legislature, with a Republican majority, passed the bill, and a decade later our students are leading the nation.
The act’s implementation was a long march, which included hiring regional coordinators and school-based literacy coaches in the lowest-performing schools and prioritizing quality over quantity in hiring highly competent professionals. A Literacy Coaching Handbook was developed for coaches, K–3 teachers, administrators, and university faculty teaching early literacy. Coaches were required to train and pass an exam that equipped them with a core understanding of language structure and helped them gain instructional information to complement their teaching practices. Coaches followed up with teachers after the training to ensure the transfer of knowledge to practice. More than 14,000 teachers, principals, and higher education staff have since completed the literacy-foundation training.
Since LBPA’s enactment, the state’s educational progress has been labeled the “Mississippi Miracle.” In 2019, Mississippi was the only state to boast significant gains on the fourth-grade reading test.
This type of progress meets the needs of the present moment. Test scores have reached a 30-year low in the U.S. due to policies that keep kids in failing schools and transfer power from parents to bureaucrats, as well as the gross misuse of COVID-19 funding and anti-child, anti-scientific shutdowns of schools. The importance of drawing attention to policies that bring about change of this magnitude has never been greater. There is always room for improvement, but we are proud of our students, parents, and teachers who took up this challenge and made the Mississippi Miracle a reality.
Enacting massive education reform was not easy, and its rollout was not without its struggles. The results, however, speak for themselves. Mississippi’s policies should serve as a model for other states. It’s time to demand reform that addresses the education crisis facing our nation’s children.
