Nervous in New England: Can the North rise again?

Massachusetts public schools were the best in the nation, and the rest of New England wasn't far behind, writes Christopher Huffaker in the Boston Globe. Ten years ago, Massachusetts students "led the United States across ages, subjects, and most demographic groups, despite wide achievement gaps," on the Nation's Report Card. Students in the Deep South, who came from much poorer families, were at the bottom.

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Now test scores are falling in New England, rising in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama, he writes. While leaders of the "Southern Surge" focused relentlessly on improving reading instruction, New England schools were lowering expectations, Huffaker writes. To end the Massachusetts Malaise, leaders must “override the wishes of popular and powerful teachers unions, and, most of all, stop resting on their laurels.”

Karen Vaites and others have written about the Southern Surge in reading scores for months now, but it's an essay last week by Kelsey Piper, Illiteracy is a policy choice, that seems to have woken everybody up. "If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools," wrote Piper in The Argument.

No, Mississippi isn't cooking the books, Piper and Vaites write this week, also in The Argument. With far fewer resources than most states and far needier students, these deep South states are showing impressive progress.

Among other things, the "surge" states test K-3 students' reading progress frequently to ensure they get timely help. A "reading gate" at the end of third grade -- students aren't promoted if they can't read adequately -- acts as a motivator. "Retention policies work because so much is done between kindergarten and third grade to ensure all kids develop reading skills."

What's also known as the “Mississippi Miracle” isn't just a matter of "more phonics" and "more test-based accountability," writes Natalie Wexler. It's much more complicated than "back to basics."

Calls for Northern schools to teach more phonics may help in the early grades, but gains will fade as students move from decoding to understanding more complex writing, she argues. That requires teaching background knowledge.

The "surge" states adopted comprehensive programs to train teachers in the "science of reading," adopt high-quality curricula and show teachers how to teach the curriculum well, Wexler writes.

"As Vaites detailed in her original piece, Louisiana and Tennessee have been much more focused on encouraging the adoption of knowledge-building literacy curricula" than Mississippi and Alabama, she writes. That will pay off as students get older.

For over a decade, for example, Louisiana has "educated its teacher workforce about the crucial role of knowledge in comprehension; developed a rating and incentive system that nudged districts to adopt literacy curricula that built both foundational reading skills and knowledge effectively; helped districts find professional development for educators focused on the specifics of those curricula; and even created its own knowledge-building literacy curriculum, as well as a decent social studies curriculum," Wexler writes. "It's also helped make teachers aware of the importance of explicit writing instruction, which can boost both reading comprehension and learning in general."

She also argues that test-based accountability helps only "if the tests are related to what kids have been taught in school — the literature they’ve read, the history or science they’ve learned."

Already, we're seeing some schools spend so much time on phonics -- an hour a day at some schools -- that teachers don't have time for "knowledge-building read-alouds and discussion," writes Wexler. Phonics is a critical step, but only one step, in a long journey.