The Mississippi Miracle versus California's Decline

Reading is essential for a child’s development. We must reinstate proven teaching methods to ensure that future generations can read effectively.

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Author’s note: Education is a subject I am deeply passionate about, and my husband and I have focused much of our charitable giving in this area. I have extensively written about the successes and challenges of America’s education system. I want to share an article I wrote for Federalist.com, as the debate over how to teach children to read has escalated into an ideological battleground. I highly recommend listening to the podcast series titled "Sold a Story," which explores this ongoing conflict that has persisted for a decade, ultimately impacting our children. The only way to create change—especially in blue states—is to take political action and reinstate proven teaching methods to ensure that future generations can read effectively.

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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2024 school year. Known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” NAEP assesses the reading and math skills of America’s fourth and eighth graders. The latest report reveals something surprising: after adjusting for demographics, the reading and math scores of students in Mississippi and Louisiana, two heavily Republican states and among the poorest in the nation, have surpassed those in deeply Democratic states such as California and New York.

The secret of Mississippi and Louisiana’s educational success is not secret at all; it is about returning to the fundamentals and following the evidence. Mississippi’s Republican-led legislature has implemented effective education reforms in 2012 that prioritize phonics — teaching students to sound out words — and enforce a retention policy for third graders who do not meet essential reading benchmarks. Furthermore, the state invests $15 million each year, or approximately $32 per student, into training teachers on literacy and providing dedicated reading coaches in schools.

The reform has produced remarkable results, with Mississippi’s fourth graders’ reading scores rising from 49th in the nation in 2013 to the top of the rankings (after adjusting for demographics) in 2024. The progress among black students is particularly impressive. According to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, the reading scores of the state’s black fourth graders have improved from 45th to third place during the same period. This reflects the effectiveness of Mississippi’s literacy program, which has provided a learning gain equivalent to a full year of schooling. Moreover, the state’s graduation rate has seen a significant rise from 72 percent in 2013 to 89.9 percent in 2024.

This drastic improvement has been dubbed as the “Mississippi Miracle,” and even caught the attention of Vice President J.D. Vance, who praised Mississippi’s education success on X.com: “This is pretty incredible. Smart education reform drastically improved Mississippi’s schools.”

Gov. Reeves declared in an interview that the education outcome in his state “is really not a miracle at all. It’s really a result of conservative reforms implemented in public education — they’re making a huge difference for kids.”

Louisiana’s Gains

Inspired by Mississippi’s success, Louisiana implemented similar education reforms in 2019. The state focused on phonics instruction and providing “content-rich” literacy curriculums. Additionally, Louisiana has invested in extensive training programs for principals, teachers, and reading coaches on how students learn to read.

Chad Aldeman, who tracks education-related news, noted, “While Mississippi might win the prize for ten-year gains, Louisiana might win for the most significant recent improvements. It was the closest state to recovering from COVID-related declines in eighth-grade reading and math, and it was the only state where fourth-grade reading scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019.”

Blue States Fall Behind

In stark contrast to the education gains in Mississippi and Louisiana, blue states such as California have seen troubling declines in educational outcomes. The latest NAEP report reveals that California’s reading scores for both fourth and eighth graders have plummeted again in 2024, remaining lower than those of 2017. While there was a slight improvement in fourth-grade math scores last year, they still lag behind the scores from 2019.

A variety of factors have contributed to this decline in blue states, including the extended school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats also rely on questionable research for education reform and stubbornly maintain flawed strategies to align with their political interests, even in the face of catastrophic results.

California’s experiments with alternatives to teaching phonics, despite extensive research that phonics works best, have failed. According to California Policy Center, “less than half (47.1 percent) of all public school students in California met state grade-level English Language Arts (ELA) standards during the 2021-22 school year … The reading scores of Black and Hispanic students are even worse. Only 30.3 percent of Black students and 36.4 percent of Hispanic students in California met grade-level ELA standards.”

Yet legislation requiring schools to implement more phonics-based reading curricula failed to pass in California’s legislature last year. This was primarily due to opposition from Democratic Party leadership, teachers unions, and advocacy groups. California Together, an advocacy group for English-learners, insists that “reading programs focused heavily on phonics are too narrow and confusing for students who struggle with English.” I find such an argument nonsensical. As a non-native speaker, I successfully learned English through a phonics-based approach. Additionally, a few school districts in California that have adopted a phonics-based approach, such as Bonita Unified School District in Los Angeles County, found that “English learners scored nearly three times higher than their peers statewide.”

Even Progressives Question Such Education Policy

The latest national scorecard on reading has prompted even loyal supporters of Democrats and teachers unions to question progressive education policies. The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board laments “that California childhood literacy rates have fallen significantly beneath those of the poorest states in the nation should be considered a stain on progressive values this state claims to stand for…[but] ensuring Californian kids receive the most effective reading lessons didn’t even merit a discussion among Democrats in the face of union opposition.”

Reading is essential for a child’s development — enhancing cognitive abilities, communication skills, and academic performance, and ultimately increasing future success. It is disheartening that Democrats and their progressive allies have opted to disregard evidence and continue to prioritize political expedience at the expanse of children’s well-being.