The Magnolia Mystery

I asked if Mississippi's reading miracle was real. Matt Barnum has the answer.

Let’s discuss my favorite thing again.

Say it with me: OUTCOMES!

On July 4th, I wrote a short post about questions L.A. Times columnist Micheal Hiltzik raised about Mississippi’s outsized gains in reading proficiency for 4th graders.

This is what the gains look like:

This graph puts so many myths in dispute. For those who say poor kids can’t learn; that testing only tells us how educated a student’s parents are; that schools and teachers can do very little to close the gaps between kids of color and their better-off, better-performing peers - so why try?

For those who say we must “fix poverty” before we can “fix schools.”

This is the best rebuttal. Policy matters. Systems matter. Instruction and great teaching matter.

Anyhoo. Enough of the soapbox.

This is what I said in my piece:

In my eagerness to lift up examples of reforms that work, I may not have dug deep enough into the Mississippi miracle. This Los Angeles Time column by Micheal Hiltzik calls the whole thing into question.

I’m not entirely convinced there isn’t a worthy rebuttal to his analysis. Still, it’s worth considering his point about Mississippi removing the bottom 10% of test takers from their pool (by retaining them in 3rd grade) to artificially inflate their outcomes. The miracle vanishes when you add that 10% of students back into the statistical pool.

Good thing I hedged my bet.

Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum has a piece today digging into the critiques of Mississippi’s reading gains. [That’s where I got the graph you see above]

Here’s his take:

In short, the state’s educational improvement appears to be legitimate and meaningful. It’s true that calling these gains a “miracle” seems overstated, and some questions about them warrant further investigation. But there’s little if any evidence they’re artificially inflated. 

There is still one big question that hasn’t been conclusively answered, though: Why did the state experience such large improvements? 

Some research supports the prevailing explanation that Mississippi’s early literacy policies contributed to better test scores. But other states have implemented similar policies and not seen gains nearly as large. It’s not clear what explains the Magnolia State’s outsized improvements. 

Call it the Mississippi mystery.

On the claim that the state’s gains were made by removing the bottom 10% of the statistical pool because they were held back in 3rd grade, Matts says that could produce only short-term gains. Mississippi’s gains have been sustained so long that it can’t be due to removing helf-back students from the statistical pool. The kids aren’t held back forever.

On another claim, that the gains “vanish” by 8th grade, “This claim is misleading. Between 2013 and 2022, Mississippi had roughly cut in half the test score gap in eighth grade between itself and the nation. Although this is not as large as the gains in fourth grade, it is still substantial,” Matt says.

His piece digs into a couple of possible drivers, early literacy programs and the state aligning their instruction to the NAEP test itself. I encourage you to read Matt's piece for more about those issues.