Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Rory Doyle for the New York Times.
Mississippi sends literacy coaches to low-performing elementary schools, one key part of its strategy.

Educators have known for some time that the most important school years for gaining literacy is third and fourth grade. That’s why Mississippi poured its limited resources into teaching reading at that level — and turned the state around.

Sarah Mervosh writes at the New York Times, “In Kim Luckett-Langston’s first year as principal of Hazlehurst Elementary School, one of the lowest performing schools in what had been one of the lowest performing states, she quickly diagnosed the problem.

“Children at her school, outside Jackson, Miss., were suffering from what she calls A.B.T.: ‘Ain’t been taught.’

“Kindergartners arrived not knowing their letters from their numbers. After a few years in school, they were still far behind. A decade ago, just 12 percent of Hazlehurst students were reading on grade level.

“Today, Hazlehurst has clawed that figure to 35 percent. And Mississippi has emerged as one of the best places in the country for a poor child to get an education.

“Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.

“Poverty remains a driving factor in student achievement, and wealthy states like Massachusetts still have the highest share of students proficient in reading and math. But adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

“ ‘If you want to ask the question, “Which states are helping kids coming from difficult circumstances learn as much as they can?” Mississippi is now doing much better than many other states, including wealthier states in affluent progressive areas,’ said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank.

“Mississippi’s gains have been confined mostly to the early years, where the state has focused its efforts. … Yet Mississippi has figured out something almost no other state has, and it has involved far more than just changing the way reading is taught, the most common explanation for its success.

“Even as schools elsewhere have focused on issues like school funding, social justice and mental health in recent years, Mississippi schools like Hazlehurst have made academics their North Star.

“ ‘At the end of the day, our job is teaching. Their job is learning,’ said Ms. Langston, who added that no matter what is going on in a child’s life, the classroom is the one thing she can control. ‘If we don’t meet that need, we have failed them.’

“Mississippi’s progress has made it the envy of the education world, inspiring countless think pieces and recurring debates about whether the ‘Mississippi miracle’ could be real.

“How could Mississippi, with its low education spending and high child poverty, pull it off? It did not do so by relying on some of the most common proposals held up as solutions in education, like reducing class sizes, or dramatically boosting per-student funding.

“Rather, the state pushed through a vast list of other changes from the top down, including changing the way reading is taught, in an approach known as the  science of reading, but also embracing contentious school accountability policies other states have backed away from.

“ ‘Science of reading is really important — it was a key piece of what we did,’ said Rachel Canter, the longtime leader of Mississippi First, an education reform group, who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left Washington think tank. ‘But people are missing the forest for the trees if they are only looking at that.’ In addition to the reading overhaul, Mississippi raised academic standards and started giving each school a letter grade, A to F. 

“But unlike No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era federal law that set a goal of having every child in America be proficient in reading and math, Mississippi also measures how much students progress toward proficiency. Schools get credit if students show improvement — and double credit for the improvement of students in the bottom 25 percent.

“The state also takes an unusually strong role in telling schools what to do.

“The Mississippi Department of Education sends literacy and math coaches into low-performing elementary schools, with the goal of teaching teachers, not children. And state officials vet and approve curriculum used by the vast majority of districts, unusual in a country that prizes local control of schools.

“Mississippi also made other changes, like investing in pre-K, and holding back third graders who cannot read well, one of its most debated policies. …

“In Hazlehurst, a rural area 35 miles south of Jackson, more than half of children live in poverty and two in three adults don’t have a college degree. A chicken plant and the local Walmart are two main employers. The elementary school serves about 625 students, mostly Black or Hispanic. All are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. …

“It is the kind of school that might have been punished and labeled as failing during No Child Left Behind.

“Today, it is flooded with support.”

More at the Times, here.