California Should Copy the ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in Education

Students sit with their laptop computers at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, Calif., on Nov. 16, 2020. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

“‘Mississippi miracle’: Kids’ reading scores have soared in Gulf South states,” AP just reported. It noted educators in other states with low test scores no longer can say, “Thank God for Mississippi.” That’s a cliché also in California, where journalists are wont to say of low test scores, “California is nearly as bad as Mississippi.” Not anymore.

“Lately, the way people talk about those states has started to change. Instead of looking down on the Gulf South, they’re seeing it as a model,” according to AP. Now, Mississippi has become a model for advancing achievement. They’re doing something that works. And it’s not the California Way, as Gov. Gavin Newsom calls his hyper-spending increases to $23,483 per student, even as test scores have declined, as I have detailed in the Epoch Times.

The Mississippi Miracle is so striking it attracted the attention even of liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Writing May 31, he can’t praise enough the reforms in this Republican state that in 2020 voted 58 percent for President Donald Trump:

“With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has shown that it is possible to raise standards even in a state ranked dead last in the country in child poverty and hunger and second highest in teen births.

“In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of nationwide tests better known as NAEP, Mississippi has moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams—and near the top when adjusted for demographics. Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math.”

Actually, when adjusted for cost of living, California now has the highest poverty rate of any state. But the point is, poverty is no excuse for keeping kids in underperforming schools. Rather, getting K-12 education right is the path to pulling more kids out of poverty.

Children leave Wilkins Elementary school in in Jackson, Miss., on March 24, 2022. (Francois Picard/AFP via Getty Images)

The Magnolia State proudly is boasting of its achievement. When the latest NAEP data came out last October, the Mississippi Department of Education wrote in its announcement:

“Mississippi maintained its historic gains in 4th grade reading on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), while scores nationally dropped in all four NAEP subjects and grades.

“The 2022 NAEP results provide the first national measure of student learning since the start of the pandemic. Known as the Nation’s Report Card, NAEP measures student performance in 4th and 8th grade reading and math in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. ”

Note the mention of the pandemic. Last November in the Epoch Times, I wrote about California’s sharp drop in test scores from Newsom’s excessive school lockdowns, imposed harshest in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District. By contrast, Mississippi imposed only what the locals called a “light-touch lockdown.” That is, unlike in the Golden State, they didn’t panic.

I certainly remember—maybe you do, too—how the early evidence showed kids were the least affected. According to an April 21, 2020 report from Cedars-Sinai hospital, maybe the best in Southern California, as the pandemic was digging in:

“One of the mysteries of COVID-19 is why children are much less likely than adults to be harmed by the disease. To answer this question, Cedars-Sinai’s Newsroom spoke to Priya Soni, MD, Cedars-Sinai Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist.

“‘Not only are fewer children testing positive for COVID-19,’ said Soni, ‘but those who do test positive are likely to have milder cases.’”

Mississippi on the Pacific?

Can the Mississippi Miracle become the California Miracle? Kristof notes the role of entrepreneur Jim Barksdale, who retired from Silicon Valley to return to his home state and spent $100 million to create a reading institute. Then:

“With the support of Barksdale and many others, a crucial milestone came in 2013 when state Republicans pushed through a package of legislation focused on education and when Mississippi recruited a new state superintendent of education, Carey Wright, from the Washington, D.C., school system. Wright ran the school system brilliantly until her retirement last year, meticulously ensuring that all schools actually carried out new policies and improved outcomes.

“One pillar of Mississippi’s new strategy was increasing reliance on phonics and a broader approach to literacy called the science of reading, which has been gaining ground around the country; Mississippi was at the forefront of this movement. ”

How about hiring Wright to come out here? Or if she wants to remain retired, there must be someone with a similar philosophy and drive to reform.

I’ve been writing about education now since 1977, when I was a cub reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph and attended school board meetings. It’s strange we’re still having this debate about phonics. How else do you learn an alphabet-based writing system?

I also remember when I was a kid growing up in Michigan, learning the alphabet. Eventually, we got the hard words, including learning to spell all our glorious 50 American states. The hardest was the one we were told had two double s’s, two p’s, and four i’s: Mississippi.

John Seiler’s email: [email protected]

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.