Media Manufactures Mississippi “Miracle” (Again) [Updated]

[Header Cropped from Photo by Miracle Seltzer on Unsplash]

I almost feel sorry for Louisiana. (See Update 2 below)

When the 2024 reading scores for NAEP were released, LA seemed poised to be the education “miracle” of the moment for the media and political leaders.

Since mainstream media seems to know only a few stories when covering education—outliers, crises, and miracles—the outlier gains by LA compared to the rest of the nation, reportedly still trapped in the post-Covid “learning loss,” was ripe for yet another round of manufacturing educational “miracles.”

However, the media is not ready to let go of the Mississippi “miracle” lie: There Really Was a ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in Reading. States Should Learn From It.

To maintain the MS “miracle” message, journalists must work incredibly hard to report selectively, and badly.

For example, Aldeman celebrates, again, MS as a outlier for for the achievement of the bottom 10% of students (carelessly disregarding that outlier data is statistically meaningless when making broad general claims):

But one state is bucking this trend: Mississippi. Indeed, there’s been a fair amount of coverage of Mississippi’s reading progress in recent years, but its gains are so impressive that they merit another look.

Next, Aldeman highlights reading gains by Black students in MS, omitting a damning fact about the achievement of Black (and poor) students in MS (which mirrors the entire nation):

That’s right, MS has the same racial and socio-economic achievement gaps since 1998, discrediting anything like a “miracle.”

But the likely most egregious misrepresentation of MS as a reading “miracle” is Aldeman “debunking” claims that MS gains are primarily grounded in grade retention, not the “science of reading.”

Notably, Aldeman seems to think linking to the Fordham Institute constitutes credible evidence; it isn’t.

So let’s look at the full picture about grade retention and MS’s reading scores on NAEP.

First, the research on increased reading achievement has found that only states with retention have seen score increases. Westall and Cummings concluded in a report on reading policy: “[S]tates whose policies mandate third-grade retention see significant and persistent increases in high-stakes reading scores in all cohorts…. [T]here is no consistent evidence that high-stakes reading scores increase in states without a retention component [emphasis added].” [Note that Aldeman selective refers to this study late in the article, but omits this conclusion.]

The positive impact of retention on test scores has not been debunked, but confirmed. What hasn’t been confirmed is that test score gains are actual achievement gains in reading acquisition.

Next, MS (like FL and SC, for example) has risen into the top 25% of states in grade 4 reading on NAEP, but then plummets into the bottom 25% of states by grade 8 (despite their reading reform having been implemented for over a decade), suggesting those grade 4 scores are a mirage and not a miracle:

And finally, MS has consistently retained about nine thousand students each year (mostly Black and poor students) for a decade; if the state was actually implementing something that works, the number of students being retained would decrease and (according the SOR claims that 95% of students can be proficient) disappear.

A final point is that media always omits the most important story, what research has shown for decades about student achievement:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables…. The influence of family social capital variables manifests itself in standardized test results. Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.

High-poverty states and states with high percentages of so-called racial minorities are not, in fact, beating the odds—again, note that states have not closed the racial achievement gap or the socio-economic achievement gap.

Yes, too often our schools are failing our most vulnerable students. But the greater failures are the lack of political will to address the inequity in the lives of children and the lazy and misleading journalism of the mainstream media covering education.

Update 1

The Mississippi “miracle” propaganda is part of a conservative Trojan Horse education reform movement.

Note this commentary from the Walton-funded Department of Education Reform (University of Arkansas): Mississippi’s education miracle: A model for global literacy reform. The key reveal is near the end of the commentary:

Teaching at the right level and a scripted lessons plan are among the most effective strategies to address the global learning crisis. After the World Bank reviewed over 150 education programs in 2020, nearly half showed no learning benefit.

The goal is de-professionalizing teachers and teaching, not improving student reading proficiency.

Updated 2

The political, market, and media hype over both MS and LA are harmful because that misrepresentation and exaggeration drive the fruitless crisis/reform cycles in education and distracts reform from the larger and more impactful causes of student achievement.

To understand better education reform, I recommend the recently released Opportunity to Learn Dashboard.

According to the press release from NEPC:

Funded and maintained by the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) and The Schott Foundation for Public Education, the Opportunity to Learn Dashboard tracks 18 indicators across 16 states. The project seeks to provide information about factors impacting the degree to which children of different ethnicities and races are exposed to environments conducive to learning.

However, indicators directly related to schools explain only a minority of the variation in achievement-related outcomes. Therefore, the dashboard includes out-of-school factors such as access to health insurance and affordable housing, as well as within-school factors such as exposure to challenging curricula and special education spending.

For both MS and LA, we must acknowledge the significant and robust systemic (out-of-school) disadvantages minoritized and impoverished students continue to face in both states:

Explore MS here.
Explore LA here.

Note here my points raised about lingering opportunity/achievement gaps exposed by NAEP scores in both states:

To emphasize again, NAEP scores do not reveal education “miracles” in either MS or LA. In fact, NAEP scores continue to show that education reform as usual is a failure.