Michael Hiltzik’s How Mississippi gamed its national reading test scores to produce ‘miracle’ gains is the first national media to challenge the Mississippi “miracle,” recently perpetuated again by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT.

Below is a reader that links the key components of the politics of reading crisis:

• The Politics of Reading Crisis: From the FL Model to the MS “Miracle” and the TN Disaster
• Disaster Reform and Shadow Reading Legislation: The Politics of Reading Crisis pt. 2 [UPDATED]
• Mississippi Miracle, Mirage, or Political Lie?: 2019 NAEP Reading Scores Prompt Questions, Not Answers [Update 4 July 2023]
• Test-Based Achievement Mirages: Florida Edition
• A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy (OEA)
• Grade Retention Advocacy Fails by Omission
• SOR Movement Maintains Conservative Assault on Teachers and Public Schools [Updated]

Note that the connections include policy in Florida (often called the “Florida Model” and anchored by third grade retention) and Mississippi and the influence of Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd (which funded the report on retention in MS that Kristof cited).

Here are some of the ugly numbers concerning grade retention and its disproportionate impact on Black students:

The short response to all this must be that grade retention is gaming the system and it is harmful to children, disproportionately harmful to Black, brown, and poor children.