Holding the Line

ABPTL has written about the “Mississippi Miracle” before. But now, Rachel Canter, director of education policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools project at the Progressive Policy Institute, offers insight as to why Mississippi is currently knocking it out of the park when it comes to elementary reading and math scores. Canter’s article appeared in a April 9^th posting by The Atlantic:

“No story has caught the imagination of education reformers this decade quite like the ‘Mississippi miracle.’ From 1998 to 2024, fourth-grade reading and math scores in my home state – the nation’s poorest – rose from among the worst in the country to among the best. When adjusting for demographic factors such as poverty, [Mississippi] is in first place.”

“Other states are now trying to emulate what Mississippi did. Those efforts largely revolve around adopting what’s know as the ‘science of reading’ – a set of principles and teaching techniques, including phonics, that are grounded in decades of empirical research. Last fall, for example, the Wall Street Journal editorial board marveled that ‘even California is now following Mississippi’s lead by returning to phonics’ as Governor Gavin Newsom prepared to sign a major new reading bill into law. But what many outsiders fail to understand is that Mississippi changed far more than just how reading is taught. They therefore miss why and how our literacy approach succeeded.”

“For decades, education policy in Mississippi was driven mostly by a desperate desire to avoid ranking last in the country. Aiming higher wasn’t on the agenda, because state and local leaders believe that Mississippi kids were too poor to make real progress. In practice, this meant that the state set abysmally low standards for what students should learn to advanced and graduate.”

“In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Mississippi was pulled onto the path of reform by federal legislation, most notably George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which required states to ensure that students met challenging learning standards on standardized tests and established consequences for school that failed to do so. Our performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, improved substantially from 1998 to 2009. But because the whole country was improving, too, Mississippi’s gains were not enough to move the state up in the rankings. We need to improve much, much faster than everyone else if we ever hoped to catch the national average.”

“In the ensuring years, the country saw a broad backlash to the ideas embodied in No Child Left Behind and its successor Race to the Top. Mississippi, however, took the lessons it had learned about higher expectations and built on them….”

Higher expectations in Mississippi included school district “takeovers” for districts rated as failures two years in a row. “Takeovers” included abolishing local school boards and removing the local superintendent in favor of a state appointee who reported directly to the state board of education. Mississippi also implemented a grading system for each of their public schools, with “D” and “F” schools receiving additional assistance or, after two years, being subject to “takeover.”

Mississippi also drove reform from the state level and did not allow individual school districts to sway from “the plan,” something California has not been able to accomplish.

“[California] passed a ‘landmark’ bill in 2025, framed as the fruits of a yearslong effort to help more children learn to read….”

“But a lack of accountability presages failure for California’s big reform. The law encourages school districts to select science-of-reading curricula from a state-approved list – but it also allows them to self-certify that their material meet standards. California has also begun screening students in kindergarten through second grade for literacy difficulties but generally does not require parental notification of student scores. It has no statewide retention policy at all.”

States like California, even though they are hesitant to retain youngsters who haven’t learned to read, would be wise to have some standard in place that prevents kids from moving through the system without requisite reading skills. Research has shown full grade retention isn’t in the best interest of the young learner, but the system must put the brakes on somewhere when kids can’t read.

When I worked in Texas, the Lone Star State established a set of standards that George W. Bush used as the precipice for the federal No Child Left Behind law – a set of federal expectations all states had to meet to keep federal dollars flowing to their state.

After years of celebrating “the Texas miracle,” the state’s educational system suffered downturns, mainly because state and local politicians were unable to stay the course when state K-12 data dipped. In fact, the Texas legislature lowered pass rates on the state’s reading and math tests so that they would look more acceptable to the public.

Clearly, Texas did not “hold the line” 20 years ago when it came to learning expectations for their children.

Now it will be interesting to see what happens in Mississippi. Will they maintain high expectations while pressures mount for whatever reason? Will Mississippi go the way of Texas, or possibly California, as they work to continue “the miracle”?

Til tomorrow. SVB