Each year, thousands of students across the country sit through standardized tests meant to measure progress in their education. And each year, dismal results reflect America’s literacy crisis.
But Mississippi has bucked the trend. Despite spending nearly $5,000 less per student per year than the national average, Mississippi is the only state with rising literacy rates among fourth graders since 2015, according to the Nation’s Report Card.
The “Mississippi Miracle” may seem inscrutable, but it’s a model any state could replicate if education administrators set aside politicized education policy and returned to research-backed methods.
The root of the literacy crisis began when education became a political battleground in the late 20th century. Progressive education theories revolutionized the methods taught in teacher education programs. Instead of relying on traditional and structured methods, teachers were instructed to let students infer or guess answers on their own, former public educator Beanie Geoghegan explained to IW Features.
This philosophy originated with philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who posited that man was born good in his natural state, only to be corrupted by society. As a result, Rousseau believed that freedom, not discipline, was what children needed. Figures like John Dewey, who emphasized an experience-focused approach to education, later advanced and developed Rousseau’s ideology. According to these figures, children learn best by trial and error—supplemented by only light guidance from educators.
From this, the whole language theory of literacy emerged and proposed that children have an innate aptitude for reading. Rather than being attentively instructed on the foundations of language, students were told to rely on context clues, pictures, and a word’s first letter to decipher meaning.
No studies supported whole language learning—in fact, research has never supported whole language learning—but the appeal of this method was largely political: phonics was a method favored by traditionalist right-wingers, while whole language was favored by left-wingers who had adopted Rousseau’s postmodernist worldview. At the heart of the divide were two opposed worldviews on whether children needed maximum freedom or balanced discipline.
Students were caught in the crossfire of this debate. Children who needed the most support—such as dyslexic students—particularly struggled with whole language methods.
And as dismal test results emerged, teachers were also left struggling. One assistant principal told the Associated Press, “I was winging it.”
This was only part of a pattern across the nation: standardized testing data showing dropping literacy rates was acknowledged and then disregarded.
“Year after year after year, we get the standardized testing data, and we don’t do anything with it,” Priscilla Rahn previously told IW Features. “Some people say, ‘Well, we need to change the test.’ You can look at the test and see—even change the test—but also listen to what teachers are communicating about what’s going on in the classrooms.”
Indeed, identifying what educators and classrooms truly needed was the starting point for Mississippi’s literacy revival. In 2013, the state launched its literacy program by offering its teachers training in the science of reading, a methodology that emphasizes phonics, phonemes, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. And as of 2016, new teachers in the state must pass an exam to show they understand research-based reading methods.
Across the country, schools that have implemented science of reading strategies have seen rising literacy rates, making Mississippi no exception. But for Mississippi, research-backed reading methods were only the first step.
Another key reform the state made was its “purposeful retention” policy requiring third graders to demonstrate reading proficiency before advancing to the fourth grade. Students who are retained in the third grade receive individualized reading support and resources, including at least 90 minutes of reading tutelage.
According to a 2023 study, by the time these retained students reached the sixth grade, they achieved higher English language arts scores than students with substandard scores who were immediately advanced to fourth grade. And notably, the study also found that retained students experienced no negative impact in other areas of their educational development.
Finally, because Mississippi’s program prioritizes giving students personalized attention, it also provides reading coaches to assist primary classroom instructors, offering support staff that teachers consistently indicate they highly value.
Though it’s not politically flashy and doesn’t fit with the progressive model of education, it’s clear that Mississippi’s model successfully teaches students to read. It invests in and values the educators who are helping raise up the next generation of Americans—all while spending less per student than the national average.
For other states to adopt their own version of Mississippi’s literacy program, they would need to prioritize students, educators, and ordinary Americans over adherence to an ideology. They would need to remember the true purpose of schools: education. And they would need to remember that students are more important than progressive politics.
