Education, education reform, reading, Science of Reading

Grade Retention Harms Children, Corrupts Test Data, But Not a Miracle: Mississippi Edition [UPDATED 12/12/24]

September 26, 2023 plthomasedd

The “science of reading” (SOR) movement has now impacted reading practices and reading legislation in essentially every state in the US. While the SOR movement claims lack credibility, the essential template of the media narrative remains compelling for the public and politicians.

Some of the key claims in the SOR movement can now be interrogated, however, since several states have implemented SOR legislation since 2012; those key claims include the following:

Mississippi has produced “miracle” results with SOR policy and should serve as a model for all states’ reading legislation.
SOR practices, structured literacy, can produce 95% of students reading at grade level.
SOR policy does not accept poverty as an “excuse.”

The following data from Mississippi on reading proficiency and grade retention exposes that these claims are misleading or possibly false:

2014-2015 – 3064 (grade 3) – 12,224 K-3 retained/ 32.2% proficiency

2015-2016 – 2307 (grade 3) – 11,310 K-3 retained/ 32.3% proficiency

2016-2017 – 1505 (grade 3) – 9834 K-3 retained / 36.1 % proficiency

2017-2018 – 1285 (grade 3) – 8902 K-3 retained / 44.7% proficiency

2018-2019 – 3379 (grade 3) – 11,034 K-3 retained / 48.3% proficiency

2021-2022 – 2958 (grade 3) – 10,388 K-3 retained / 46.4% proficiency

2022-2023 – 2287 (grade 3) – 9,525 K-3 retained/ 51.6% proficiency

2023-2024 – 2033 (grade 3) – 9,121 K-3 retained/ 57.7% proficiency

Literacy-Based Promotion Act Annual Reports

Some key concerns this data raises include the following:

Proficiency is approaching nothing near 95%, but there is an increase, possibly notable in the highest level.
Since early reading proficiency is strongly impacted at the birth month level, however, score increases may be (likely are) a reflection of older students being tested at grade levels with younger peers.
Large numbers of students over four years of schooling (K-3) continue to be retained, calling into question how well SOR/SL actually works.
States such as MS and FL that have seen NAEP scores and rankings increase at grade 4 have not seen a similar increase at grade 8, suggesting the score increases are a mirage, not a miracle. Grade 8 NAEP data suggests that, in fact, poverty and other out-of-school factors remain significant in terms of student achievement (poverty is not an excuse, but something that also should be addressed).
Retention disproportionately impacts Black students and students in poverty:

*(USDOE/*Office of Civil Rights) – Data 2017-2018

SOR/SL are unlikely to have produced a miracle in MS or any other state (see Florida) , but grade retention is increasingly a political tool that harms children in order to corrupt test data to serve the needs of the education market place and politicians.