As Mississippi continues to garner headlines for improving its early literacy outcomes over the past decade, some want to minimize the state’s success—and discount what it can mean for other states looking to implement similar literacy policies.
It’s easy to tear something down without a complete understanding of how it came to be. It’s also easy to voice objections to making progress in one area—in this case, early literacy—because a state has long struggled with other challenges: poverty, public health and racism.
At ExcelinEd, we choose to focus on a powerful lesson here: how Mississippi has utilized sound public policy to improve outcomes for its youngest students.
Here are four reasons why those gains are more than just real—they are real and replicable:
More than a decade ago, Mississippi was in the middle of a literacy crisis. In 2011, almost four out of five fourth graders scored below proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.
Two years later, the state confronted those low reading rates head-on with its Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA). This legislation emphasized prevention of reading difficulties through screenings, early identification and interventions to address the needs of students at risk for reading failure.
The LBPA was based on a first-in-the-nation reading law in Florida that ended social promotion in 2002, paving the way for a suite of literacy policies that address and support student needs and empower educators and families for success. As a result of its focus on early literacy, Florida increased its NAEP fourth-grade reading scale score by 13 points, going from 214 in 2002 to 227 in 2015. That’s equivalent to an improvement of one-and-a-half grade levels.
Florida now ranks third in the nation, and Mississippi has moved from 49th to 21st, in fourth grade reading since 2013.
This progress would not have been possible without ending social promotion and implementing the so-called “third-grade gate.” That’s the policy where third graders who are not reading at grade level are retained so they can receive additional literacy support. That policy is only one of the 17 comprehensive early literacy principles that, when combined, have been proven to lead to improved outcomes. Admittedly, it’s probably the most controversial.
Critics tend to take aim at retention for two reasons: First, it can be an emotional issue for families to find out their child needs to repeat a grade, although recent research indicates retention under the policy improved reading outcomes and did not significantly impact math scores, absences, and special education identification. Second, critics want to believe gains can be made without retention, and they strategically parse the data to prove their point.
Critics have alleged that Mississippi’s outcomes are a “statistical illusion,” because of the percentage of students retained by the third-grade gate. Retained students’ test scores aren’t part of the overall results, so they argue the picture is rosier than it should be.
Except that’s not true at all. Researchers at Mississippi First took a deep dive into the data and what actually happened.
Here’s the short version: The largest NAEP gains in Mississippi were from 2013-2015 when no third graders were retained—because the state had not yet implemented that part of the law. The outcomes that led to the “Mississippi Miracle” designation in 2019 were made by the 2018 cohort of third graders, less than 5% of whom were retained.
There was a one-time jump in retention in 2019, because the state raised the standard for a student to pass the third-grade gate. But the retention rate has declined every year since then, even after the pandemic.
Retention has decreased directly because the state has had more teachers and coaches trained in the science of reading, and consequently, it became easier to identify students who needed additional intervention. In short, the law worked exactly as planned.
Looking at the test scores more broadly, it’s understandable that some might doubt the turnaround, but the results don’t lie. Consider this from a recent Chalkbeat story looking into the data:
Andrew Ho, a testing expert at Harvard University and previously a member of the board that oversees NAEP, said his instinct is to question big test score gains. But in the case of Mississippi, he said, “I don’t see any smoking guns or red flags that make me say that they’re gaming NAEP.”
Over the last two decades, more than half of U.S. states have adopted early literacy policies that require reading instruction, interventions, curriculum and professional development for teachers of reading to align with what is known as the science of reading.
But not all states have seen the same kind of results that Mississippi has. Why?
Former Mississippi Superintendent of Education Dr. Carey Wright sums up the state’s success this way:
Educators do not call these achievements a “miracle” because we know Mississippi’s progress in education is the result of strong policies, the effective implementation of a comprehensive statewide strategy and years of hard work from the state to the classroom level.
The early literacy efforts in Mississippi included a state-funded commitment to a pre-kindergarten pilot program; a comprehensive reading policy featuring a promotion/retention component at third grade; and a required assessment of the knowledge and skills needed to teach the science of reading for aspiring elementary teachers.
Additionally, the state adopted new, rigorous standards in 2010, which were being phased in by grade with the expectation of statewide implementation during the 2015-2016 school year. While state legislation was a first step, implementing the standards simultaneously statewide required an unprecedented coordination of efforts among many groups.
Broad, sweeping change is rarely successful without strong leadership and consistent communication. From the Governor’s Office down to individual classrooms and communities, Mississippi spent two years rolling out the new law and standards; hiring and training reading coaches; ensuring new curricula were in place; and answering lots and lots of questions from educators, families and school leaders.
In working at the national level on state-based reforms in K-12 education, ExcelinEd’s experts know no two states are alike, and we keep that top of mind as we partner on policy solutions.
Mississippi’s gains in early literacy happened because elected officials, educators, advocates and philanthropic supporters in that state dug in, determined to overcome a chronic literacy challenge.
The secret sauce of successful policy work is equipping state and local leaders with proven solutions, respecting that those on the ground know their state best.
Mississippi leaders looked to states like Florida for what had already worked, but they ultimately came up with solutions they knew could work in Mississippi. As former state superintendent Dr. Wright put it:
For decades, Mississippi’s reputation for public education has been linked to its overall reputation — bringing to mind the conditions of segregation, poverty and ranking at the bottom in the nation in nearly every indicator of health and well-being. Those conditions have long presented challenges to educators in Mississippi, just as they do in communities around the United States that face the same issues.
Despite these challenges, Mississippi set the stage for its achievements through a coordinated effort that combined policy, evidence-based strategies, investments in teacher training and student support systems and an unwavering belief that all Mississippi children — including poor, Black and Hispanic children — can and will do better.
In Mississippi, they already are. The real miracle will happen when every leader in every other state believes it about their students, too.
