9 ms·

This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would l

by kogus 1y ago

This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would love to see a discussion around the specific policies and practices that MS has put in place to actually achieve these results. The article doesn't really discuss that.

dataengineer56 1y ago
They hold students back if they don't pass a basic reading literacy test in third grade.
- duxup 1y ago
  Is that a state wide policy?
  - selfselfgo 1y ago
    [dead]
- pc86 1y ago
  Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial?
  - aredox 1y ago
    Who would have thought that statistics could be improved by eliminating bad data points?
    - pc86 1y ago
      I don't want to strawman your argument but it sounds like you're saying that if you're in 3rd grade one year you should be in 4th grade the next year no matter what. That there's nothing you actually need to learn in 3rd grade in order to be advanced to 4th grade. Is that what you're saying?
      - bombcar 1y ago
        I would say that the point is that you can't just look at one datapoint, especially if there are other things affecting it. The most obvious case of this is comparing private vs public schools, where the private schools can be selective and kick out anyone who doesn't perform or they don't like, but the public schools have to accept everyone by law. Obviously failing anyone who cannot read from getting to 4th grade will greatly improve 8th grade reading scores.
        seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        Those failing kids eventually make it to the 8th grade, however, and affect statistics. Still, having lived there and attending one of the better middle and high schools near Vicksburg, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were gaming the system in some way (I hope they aren’t and these gains are real, though).
        directevolve 1y ago
        If a kid achieves a great 8th grade test score at age 18, is that a success or a failure of the system? What we care about is the level of achievement by a given age. To determine that, we need to be comparing states using standardized tests given to age groups, not grade levels. It is fine to hold students back, if we think that will do them more good than advancing them. But they still need to be tested the same way as their age group if we want to do a meaningful comparison between states.
        ryathal 1y ago
        If an 18 year old achieves a great score on an 8th grade test they are above average for adults.
        seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        If the kid is held back and not failed forward, at least they get a chance to fix things.
      - 1y ago
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    They should do that with sports too, since it's fair and provides a reasonable basis for comparison
    - dkarl 1y ago
      At every age, there's a high attrition of students participating in competitive sports, until only a tiny elite remains. Is that what we want for reading and math?
      - secstate 1y ago
        yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. What's wrong with a tiny elite remaining if it's based on actually being able to do the work? The biggest red flag here for me is not that the tiny elite remain, it's that life circumstances will dictate that the majority of the tiny elite will continue to come from privileged families who have the time and resources to give their kids a leg up. BUT pushing kids into places where they objectively cannot compete intellectually or physically under the auspices of fairness is the devil's work. We need constant work at creating equality and to lower barriers to social services, not "fairness" and pretending everyone is already equal.
        motorest 1y ago
        > yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. Failing to teach kids how to read is a failure of the school system, not the kid. Dropping kids because the school system failed them is just yet another failure of a school system, and one which is at best a self-serving failure: a way to mask the extent of which the system is broken by blaming the victims of said system. As an exercise, invest a few minutes thinking on why most communities do not experience this failure rate.
        reverendsteveii 1y ago
        this, absolutely. when the person you're replying to asked "What's wrong with their being a tiny elite" they seem to be purposely ignoring the fact that what we're measuring is competence in basic skills. A school isn't supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 99 droupouts and one nuclear physicist. A school is supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 100 kids who can read, write, do math and understand how their society works well enough to participate in it meaningfully.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial? I think the point is that the school system is outputting kids that are not prepared for the academic environment they create themselves for these kids. So instead of fixing the problem, they are eliminating the bad results to inflate the success statistics.
- c4mden 1y ago
  They invested heavily in early literacy programs and literacy training for K-3 teachers.
- MattSteelblade 1y ago
  The author posted a link to an article[1] showing that Mississippi's retention policies were not responsible for the increase in scores. > But I've gotten some plausible pushback from researchers who say that Mississippi has always held back lots of kids. In practice, the 2013 law didn't change anything. > ... > In 2017, the average age of a fourth grade class is a minuscule 0.01 higher than the 1998-2013 average. That's no difference at all. This proxy is strong evidence that Mississippi's retention policies never changed in practice, which means it's entirely kosher to just compare their scores normally before and after reform. [1] https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
That's because the article is really about politics, not education. Education was just a hook for the author to hang a political point on.
- rubyfan 1y ago
  yeah, they lost me at the use of the word “elites”
- pc86 1y ago
  If the educational system is run in some measure by the government, it is going to have political implications regardless.
- lolinder 1y ago
  Just to clarify to those reading the comments first, the political point he's making is not to ignore Mississippi just because it's Mississippi. He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans at the end and is pretty clearly not a fan of the way either party is approaching education at the national level right now. He is drawing attention to the fact that some red states with historically bad schools have started pulling ahead of some blue states with historically good schools, but his interest is in making sure we learn from that, not scoring culture war points.
  - dentemple 1y ago
    > "He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans" You left out the fact these warnings essentially boil down to: "Democrats need to stop being bad, and Republicans need to continue being good." The political bias is clear as day in the article.
    - lolinder 1y ago
      That's not what he says. He dedicates most of the section that's directed at Republicans critiquing the administration's wholesale dismantling of the Department of Education and warning that they could run on education in the future if they, you know, didn't do that. I think people just have an idea of what his political slant must be because he's defending the indefensible state of Mississippi.
kardianos 1y ago
They teach using proven methods, like phonics. They actually teach math. They test and use that as real information. They focus on results not on ideology. They do NOT encurage using Paulo Freire's "methods".
- miltonlost 1y ago
  Is that in the article? Where do you know their curriculum?
  - ch4s3 1y ago
    Its not in the article but you can find the information elsewhere its been in the news if you follow education[1]. [1] https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/mississippi-students-surged-in-reading-over-the-last-decade-heres-how-schools-got-them-there/2023/06 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/mississippi-student...
- aredox 1y ago
  Proven methods... For what? Acing standardised tests? There is more to live and success than standardised tests. Steve Jobs wasn't a brilliant student with top marks everywhere.
  - ch4s3 1y ago
    Phonics is well supported by evidence to be the best way to teach children to decode words in English[1]. [1]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonics-teaching-reading-evidence https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonic...
    - hirvi74 1y ago
      I wonder if other languages receive greater benefits from phonics than English? English is wild language with plenty examples of phonetic rules being broken. Take a simple word like 'rough'. Learning the phonetics doesn't help with the word 'cough'. Neither help with words like 'though' and 'through'. Words like 'read' and 'lead' cannot be properly pronounced without context clues. Not to mention all the odd-ball words in English like 'colonel'. I also think location plays a role too. Where I am from, words like 'tin' and 'ten' are not pronounced differently at all [1]. In other parts of the US, that is not the case. I do not doubt phonics is the best method method for learning to read. All I am saying is that the other methods must truly be abysmal for phonics to be the best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_close_front_vowels#Pin%E2%80%93pen_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...
keenmaster 1y ago
Mississippi's average ACT scores are tied for last (edit: tied for second to last). I’m sure some of their educational outcomes are improving, but the demographic-adjusted stats from elementary school students are misleading. Holding kids back for poor performance can really pump their numbers inadvertently. Even if that’s not a very prevalent practice, performance in high school is more important and far more predictive of life outcomes. You know what’s crazier? Mississippi’s average ACT was higher before some of their education policy improvements.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  It's the height of elitism to pretend that this comment isn't shooting up in the rankings, and it would be foolish to ignore it
- happyopossum 1y ago
  ACT scores trail education outcomes by ~10 years, as students in school in the middle of a shift don’t get the full benefit from it - they’re often not included in policy changes for the sake of continuity (you may not be able to suddenly change the way you teach math in 5th grade).
  - keenmaster 1y ago
    The main changes to reading instruction were made around 2013, and math instruction in 2016. I wouldn’t expect a decrease in ACT scores 12 and 9 years later respectively, even when considering that it takes some time for instructors to master the new approach.
  - gcmeplz 1y ago
    State-based ACT scores are also highly influenced by who takes the ACT. If more students choose to take the ACT, the scores might go down even it's because your education system is doing a better job because more kids are trying for college. For the same reason, you'll see some surprising state scores for SAT/ACT. If you're in a state that prioritizes the ACT, the main students taking the SAT are the strongest students who are looking at out-of-state schools. Aside from the time lag, I don't think you can look at voluntary test scores and draw many useful conclusions from it.
bee_rider 1y ago
The scores are adjusted for some demographic factors, so one explanation could be that they use exactly the same strategies as everybody else but the “demographic factors” adjustment works out for them.
- bitshiftfaced 1y ago
  Children of similar demographics are getting better absolute reading scores in Mississippi. How would it "work out" for them in a way that isn't explained by performance?

by kogus 1y ago

dataengineer56 1y ago

They hold students back if they don't pass a basic reading literacy test in third grade.

duxup 1y ago
Is that a state wide policy?
- selfselfgo 1y ago
  [dead]
pc86 1y ago
Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial?
- aredox 1y ago
  Who would have thought that statistics could be improved by eliminating bad data points?
  - pc86 1y ago
    I don't want to strawman your argument but it sounds like you're saying that if you're in 3rd grade one year you should be in 4th grade the next year no matter what. That there's nothing you actually need to learn in 3rd grade in order to be advanced to 4th grade. Is that what you're saying?
    - bombcar 1y ago
      I would say that the point is that you can't just look at one datapoint, especially if there are other things affecting it. The most obvious case of this is comparing private vs public schools, where the private schools can be selective and kick out anyone who doesn't perform or they don't like, but the public schools have to accept everyone by law. Obviously failing anyone who cannot read from getting to 4th grade will greatly improve 8th grade reading scores.
      - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        Those failing kids eventually make it to the 8th grade, however, and affect statistics. Still, having lived there and attending one of the better middle and high schools near Vicksburg, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were gaming the system in some way (I hope they aren’t and these gains are real, though).
        directevolve 1y ago
        If a kid achieves a great 8th grade test score at age 18, is that a success or a failure of the system? What we care about is the level of achievement by a given age. To determine that, we need to be comparing states using standardized tests given to age groups, not grade levels. It is fine to hold students back, if we think that will do them more good than advancing them. But they still need to be tested the same way as their age group if we want to do a meaningful comparison between states.
        ryathal 1y ago
        If an 18 year old achieves a great score on an 8th grade test they are above average for adults.
        seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        If the kid is held back and not failed forward, at least they get a chance to fix things.
    - 1y ago
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  They should do that with sports too, since it's fair and provides a reasonable basis for comparison
  - dkarl 1y ago
    At every age, there's a high attrition of students participating in competitive sports, until only a tiny elite remains. Is that what we want for reading and math?
    - secstate 1y ago
      yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. What's wrong with a tiny elite remaining if it's based on actually being able to do the work? The biggest red flag here for me is not that the tiny elite remain, it's that life circumstances will dictate that the majority of the tiny elite will continue to come from privileged families who have the time and resources to give their kids a leg up. BUT pushing kids into places where they objectively cannot compete intellectually or physically under the auspices of fairness is the devil's work. We need constant work at creating equality and to lower barriers to social services, not "fairness" and pretending everyone is already equal.
      - motorest 1y ago
        > yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. Failing to teach kids how to read is a failure of the school system, not the kid. Dropping kids because the school system failed them is just yet another failure of a school system, and one which is at best a self-serving failure: a way to mask the extent of which the system is broken by blaming the victims of said system. As an exercise, invest a few minutes thinking on why most communities do not experience this failure rate.
        reverendsteveii 1y ago
        this, absolutely. when the person you're replying to asked "What's wrong with their being a tiny elite" they seem to be purposely ignoring the fact that what we're measuring is competence in basic skills. A school isn't supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 99 droupouts and one nuclear physicist. A school is supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 100 kids who can read, write, do math and understand how their society works well enough to participate in it meaningfully.
- motorest 1y ago
  > Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial? I think the point is that the school system is outputting kids that are not prepared for the academic environment they create themselves for these kids. So instead of fixing the problem, they are eliminating the bad results to inflate the success statistics.
c4mden 1y ago
They invested heavily in early literacy programs and literacy training for K-3 teachers.
MattSteelblade 1y ago
The author posted a link to an article[1] showing that Mississippi's retention policies were not responsible for the increase in scores. > But I've gotten some plausible pushback from researchers who say that Mississippi has always held back lots of kids. In practice, the 2013 law didn't change anything. > ... > In 2017, the average age of a fourth grade class is a minuscule 0.01 higher than the 1998-2013 average. That's no difference at all. This proxy is strong evidence that Mississippi's retention policies never changed in practice, which means it's entirely kosher to just compare their scores normally before and after reform. [1] https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...

amanaplanacanal 1y ago

That's because the article is really about politics, not education. Education was just a hook for the author to hang a political point on.

rubyfan 1y ago
yeah, they lost me at the use of the word “elites”
pc86 1y ago
If the educational system is run in some measure by the government, it is going to have political implications regardless.
lolinder 1y ago
Just to clarify to those reading the comments first, the political point he's making is not to ignore Mississippi just because it's Mississippi. He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans at the end and is pretty clearly not a fan of the way either party is approaching education at the national level right now. He is drawing attention to the fact that some red states with historically bad schools have started pulling ahead of some blue states with historically good schools, but his interest is in making sure we learn from that, not scoring culture war points.
- dentemple 1y ago
  > "He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans" You left out the fact these warnings essentially boil down to: "Democrats need to stop being bad, and Republicans need to continue being good." The political bias is clear as day in the article.
  - lolinder 1y ago
    That's not what he says. He dedicates most of the section that's directed at Republicans critiquing the administration's wholesale dismantling of the Department of Education and warning that they could run on education in the future if they, you know, didn't do that. I think people just have an idea of what his political slant must be because he's defending the indefensible state of Mississippi.

kardianos 1y ago

They teach using proven methods, like phonics. They actually teach math. They test and use that as real information. They focus on results not on ideology. They do NOT encurage using Paulo Freire's "methods".

miltonlost 1y ago
Is that in the article? Where do you know their curriculum?
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Its not in the article but you can find the information elsewhere its been in the news if you follow education[1]. [1] https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/mississippi-students-surged-in-reading-over-the-last-decade-heres-how-schools-got-them-there/2023/06 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/mississippi-student...
aredox 1y ago
Proven methods... For what? Acing standardised tests? There is more to live and success than standardised tests. Steve Jobs wasn't a brilliant student with top marks everywhere.
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Phonics is well supported by evidence to be the best way to teach children to decode words in English[1]. [1]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonics-teaching-reading-evidence https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonic...
  - hirvi74 1y ago
    I wonder if other languages receive greater benefits from phonics than English? English is wild language with plenty examples of phonetic rules being broken. Take a simple word like 'rough'. Learning the phonetics doesn't help with the word 'cough'. Neither help with words like 'though' and 'through'. Words like 'read' and 'lead' cannot be properly pronounced without context clues. Not to mention all the odd-ball words in English like 'colonel'. I also think location plays a role too. Where I am from, words like 'tin' and 'ten' are not pronounced differently at all [1]. In other parts of the US, that is not the case. I do not doubt phonics is the best method method for learning to read. All I am saying is that the other methods must truly be abysmal for phonics to be the best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_close_front_vowels#Pin%E2%80%93pen_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...

keenmaster 1y ago

Mississippi's average ACT scores are tied for last (edit: tied for second to last). I’m sure some of their educational outcomes are improving, but the demographic-adjusted stats from elementary school students are misleading. Holding kids back for poor performance can really pump their numbers inadvertently. Even if that’s not a very prevalent practice, performance in high school is more important and far more predictive of life outcomes. You know what’s crazier? Mississippi’s average ACT was higher before some of their education policy improvements.

reverendsteveii 1y ago
It's the height of elitism to pretend that this comment isn't shooting up in the rankings, and it would be foolish to ignore it
happyopossum 1y ago
ACT scores trail education outcomes by ~10 years, as students in school in the middle of a shift don’t get the full benefit from it - they’re often not included in policy changes for the sake of continuity (you may not be able to suddenly change the way you teach math in 5th grade).
- keenmaster 1y ago
  The main changes to reading instruction were made around 2013, and math instruction in 2016. I wouldn’t expect a decrease in ACT scores 12 and 9 years later respectively, even when considering that it takes some time for instructors to master the new approach.
- gcmeplz 1y ago
  State-based ACT scores are also highly influenced by who takes the ACT. If more students choose to take the ACT, the scores might go down even it's because your education system is doing a better job because more kids are trying for college. For the same reason, you'll see some surprising state scores for SAT/ACT. If you're in a state that prioritizes the ACT, the main students taking the SAT are the strongest students who are looking at out-of-state schools. Aside from the time lag, I don't think you can look at voluntary test scores and draw many useful conclusions from it.

bee_rider 1y ago

The scores are adjusted for some demographic factors, so one explanation could be that they use exactly the same strategies as everybody else but the “demographic factors” adjustment works out for them.

bitshiftfaced 1y ago
Children of similar demographics are getting better absolute reading scores in Mississippi. How would it "work out" for them in a way that isn't explained by performance?