Learn from Mississippi (really) how to improve learning and equity
- Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 11
- 2 min read
If liberals really care about kids, if they really think that "education, opportunity and racial equity" is the "civil rights issue of the 21st century," they'll study the success of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and bring the "Southern Surge" to the north, writes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
"Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute," he writes. "Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math."
A Black Mississippi child is two and a half times as likely to be proficient in reading by fourth grade as a Black California child. A low-income fourth grader is almost twice as likely to test proficient at math in Mississippi as in Oregon.
"Spending per pupil in Alabama and Mississippi was below $12,000 in 2024, while in New York it was almost $30,000," Kristof writes. These policies are affordable.
Strong leadership has imposed a coherent statewide strategy in the surge states, he writes. "This includes “science of reading” curriculums, teacher coaching, measurement of student performance and accountability at all levels."
School leaders work very hard to get students to attend regularly, he writes. Alabama parents are warned they could be charged with neglect if their child is repeatedly truant. A "dropout prevention" team goes into action to help high school students balance jobs and schooling.
In surge states, schools are supposed to track students' progress and intervene if they fall behind instead of passing them along. A "reading gate" motivates students, parents and teachers to get students to grade level by the end of third grade.
In Hollandale in the Mississippi Delta, 8-year-old Dyhlan Wooten started third grade reading at the first-grade level, he writes. At-risk readers receive tutoring in a small group every day. Their progress is measured weekly. Dyhlan expects to move from the yellow to the green zone, which would put her on track to pass the reading test -- without the need for summer school -- and move on to fourth grade.
Higher reading scores could move Hollandale from a "B" on the state report card to an "A." Everyone's motivated, writes Kristof.
In the comments, many readers refuse to believe blue states have anything to learn from red states. Some seem to have reading problems of their own.
Chad Aldeman reports on 138 New York City schools that are beating the odds on teaching reading to low-income students. Charter schools make up 9.5 percent of New York public schools in his sample, but 38.5 percent of the success stories. Of the 10 highest-scoring schools in the state, eight are New York City charters.
"All serve a high concentration of low-income students," he writes. And yet 90 to 97 percent of third graders were proficient readers in 2024, compared to 43 percent of third-graders statewide.
Will champions of equity try to learn from these successful schools?
Your statistical reasoning looks shaky to me, Joanne.
1) If Mississippi's fourth grade success fades out by eighth grade, as NAEP results suggest, who cares?
2) If New York City's charter schools were really doing well, the eighth grade scores of the city as a whole should be rising, and they aren't, which suggests that a shell game is going on, with the children of the most academically ambitious families self-selecting into charter schools, which means the gains of the latter occur entirely at the expense of the schools they otherwise might have attended.