[Header Photo by BABAMURAT USMANOV on Unsplash]

Another flurry of over-the-top commentary has resurfaced on social media concerning reading reform in Mississippi; for example:

Since 2019, the discourse around reading reform in MS has been consistently hyperbolic and misleading because, frankly, there is little solid evidence supporting the rush to copy the state’s reform.

Even a historically top-scoring state, Massachusetts, is poised to join the “science of reading” reform fad.

Along with the new round of Mississippi mania, however, comes a bit of sobering news: The grades are in: Mississippi schools backslide on academic progress.

The relentless cycles of ever-new education reform since the 1980s and the fatal mistake of copycat reform movements are being replicated by the rush to “be like Mississippi.”

The belief that MS has performed a miracle in reading instruction and achievement is likely at least misleading if not a mirage (increased test scores due to manipulating the population of students being tested but not due to greater reading proficiency). Regardless, states must resist copycat education reform.

Questions Remain Unanswered about Popular Reading Reform: The Mississippi Model

Because of the state’s exceptional National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 4 reading scores in 2019, Mississippi was anointed as an education “miracle” in The New York Times.

However, one admission in that NYT’s christening has yet to be fully addressed: “What’s up in Mississippi? There’s no way to know for sure what causes increases in test scores, but Mississippi has been doing something notable: making sure all of its teachers understand the science of reading.”

At best, Mississippi’s grade 4 reading scores challenge the overwhelming evidence that standardized test scores mostly correlate with race and social class. However, in 2019, the outlier NAEP scores were merely correlated with Mississippi’s comprehensive reading reform that has now been implemented for well over a decade.

Since the early 1980s and the release of the highly politicized A Nation at Risk, education reform has remained in a permanent series of crisis/reform cycles, driven by copy-cat legislation.

Much of that reform, unfortunately, has been the result of media, politicians, and reformers failing to understand test data—such as misunderstanding and misrepresenting NAEP achievement levels—and thus passing reform that fails to match the needs of students, teachers, and schools.

Despite the lack of robust research on why Mississippi has achieved and maintained outlier scores in grade 4 reading, many states have rushed to implement the Mississippi model of reading reform, often identified as the “science of reading.”

That reform has some common features: mandates about what reading programs meet the standard of “scientific,” teacher retraining in the “science of reading,” bans on some reading instructional practices, and third-grade retention based on state assessments of reading.

Research by Westall and Cummings offers insight into the current state of reading reform, acknowledging that those reforms have resulted in some short-term test score gains similar to Mississippi’s.

However, that study has an important caveat: Only states implementing third-grade retention are seeing those score increases. The researchers note that this study does not conclude why retention correlates with short-term score gains, however.

While Reading Wars are often contentious and driven by hyperbole and confrontational rhetoric, most people would agree that the US can and should do a better job of teaching children to read, and our most vulnerable populations of students are those being carelessly left behind despite a permanent state of education reform in the US for over five decades.

Before we commit to more reform, there are at least three questions needing to be answered about the Mississippi model for reading.

The first question may be the most important: What is the role of grade retention in reading reform?

Research on grade retention continues to raise red flags about the practice, often resulting in negative consequences for students and disproportionately impacting minoritized and impoverished students.

Mississippi has been retaining about 9,000+ K-3 students since 2014, and those retention numbers seem to be relatively consistent. If the reading reform is working, MS should have seen a significant drop in students being retained.

It seems possible that grade retention impacts the population of students being tested, and thus, distorts the test data. In short, grade retention may be raising test scores without improving student reading proficiency.

A second question must seek why Mississippi’s exceptional grade 4 scores do not erase the race or poverty gaps. As NAEP reports in 2024: “In 2024, Black students had an average score that was 25 points lower than that for White students. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998 (26 points). … [And] students who were identified as economically disadvantaged had an average score that was 26 points lower than that for students who were identified as not economically disadvantaged. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998 (26 points).”

The opportunity and achievement gaps in education in the US are by far the most pressing needs in our schools, and yet, these reforms seem to be inadequate for closing them.

One reason may be that we are pursuing the wrong reform agendas, as Maroun and Tienken argue:

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.

A final question concerns the evidence about short-term score increases among states implementing reading reform. Similar to another high-retention state, Florida, Mississippi has remained in the bottom 25% of states in grade 8 reading NAEP scores.

This data evidence also suggests that retention may be distorting test scores and not supporting robust or valid reading achievement by students.

Regretfully, the “science of” era of education reform is repeating a problem found in reform cycles since the Reagan era: Focusing on trends and failing to do the hard work of identifying what our problems are and then seeking reform to improve teaching and learning for all students.

The crisis/reform approach has not worked and likely is not working now.

However, the truth is that we simply do not know what is needed or what works because we are not committed to doing the complicated work needed and we remain too often trapped in market forces as well as political and ideological agendas that fail to serve the needs of the children who need reading the most.