9 ms·

Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

104 points by pkrecker 1y ago

duxup 1y ago
I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.
- xadhominemx 1y ago
  I think it was because the demographic adjustments move scores for black students higher and scores for white students lower. If unadjusted scores for white students and black students are converging over time, that would explain why Mississippi looks so strong compared to states like Maine, Vermont, and Oregon in the time series.
  - bitshiftfaced 1y ago
    If I'm not mistaken, they compare children of similar demographics. This controls for how different states have different percentages of varying demographics. Based on this, I don't see how the convergence of performance over time could explain why Mississippi would be doing well.
    - xadhominemx 1y ago
      Depends if the corrections are static or dynamic. The states with the worst relative moves are all super white, while the states with the best relative moves have large black populations. That suggests something strange is going on with the adjustment.
      - bitshiftfaced 1y ago
        If state A has 30% reduced school lunches and state B has 5%, then I don't think it would be strange to see the adjustment resulting in an increase in state A's ranking relative to state B. For example, in the original raw scoring method, if state B has lower quality education, then it may still outperform state A due to the difference in demographics.
        xadhominemx 1y ago
        Yes I understand the reason why to adjust for demographics, but if the demographic adjustment results in adjusted results for white states falling off a cliff while more diverse states hold steady, there’s probably something funky going on with the adjustment.
- pixl97 1y ago
  Yea, the information here is really limited and from only a single source. And in the same sense the entire article was still damning to US education. Yes, Mississippi got better, but is still not at Maine 2019 levels. Also 2020 was covid which we all know had huge upsets in education, so I'd like to see a much broader view among different states to know if this is just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
- derbOac 1y ago
  Yeah I think the phenomenon is interesting and important to be aware of, but the berating political take isn't really that helpful or productive in my opinion — even though it ostensibly attempts to be unbiased in its criticisms. It would have been more productive to dive into what is working and what might be irrelevant, and how it might or might not generalize to other places. There is a kind of implicit spin to it. I think it's worth a read, but it's also worth reading and thinking a bit about some of the sources it criticizes. For example, in this piece the author admits that some of the sleight of hand can't account for increases in reading per se: https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi... However, if you think about it, the sleight of hand can still make the scores look better than they are overall. So while the improvements might still be valid, the comparisons to other states might not be — which is part of the primary substance of the essay. I'm often disappointed in discussions about educational policy or curricula because so much of it has this cargo cult feel to it, masking political leanings with "objective" results. I say this about a lot of it, not just left or right-leaning discussions. It's almost like someone needs to make a fill-in-the-blank checklist critique of educational discussions (testing, admissions) like the old ones about email alternatives: focusing on means and not variances, attributing progress to everything in a basket of changes rather than trying to figure out which one(s) were responsible, ignoring who the students actually are, ignoring the counterfactual questions that are the elephants in the room, focusing on single outcome variables in isolation, etc. I always feel like almost everyone is cherry picking data to make a case.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    My repeated experience has been that the teachers on the ground (actually teaching the classes) know exactly what they'd like to do to improve things, but they instead have to implement whatever new policy has flowed down from who knows where this year or decade. (An actionable example of a policy that parents can implement today is "redshirting" where you hold a child with a late birthday back a year in pre-kindergarten)
    - derbOac 1y ago
- selfselfgo 1y ago
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- WaitWaitWha 1y ago
  I think it is sprinkled throughout the article: e.g., the section "Edu-Snobbery Hurts Us All", "Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off."
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.
  - 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.
api 1y ago
"Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated." Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious. I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke. WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to include rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture, and all the rest of what the American academic (mostly urban, mostly middle class to wealthy, mostly coastal) left culture considers out-groups. DEI should include the "deplorables." (I knew Hillary Clinton was going to lose when she said that. What cringe.) An American woke social liberal would not go to India and immediately start trashing rural conservative Hindu culture. They would not travel to Saudi Arabia and start trashing poor rural Muslims for having views they disagree with. They're even willing to stick up for Palestinian Muslims in spite of their social views. Why can't they extend this to their own country? What would sticking up for the "deplorables" look like? First, it would be to stop trashing them. Then it would be to stick up for their rights and defend their needs and go to bat for them against the very real social and economic adversaries that they face. Talk about the opioid epidemic. Talk about the hollowing out of the rural economy. Propose solutions. You don't win friends or change peoples' minds by mocking and bashing people. That just makes them double down out of spite. There's a very large -- probably double digit -- percentage of die-hard MAGA Trump supporters whose real reason for supporting him is because comparatively-rich white coastal educated liberals hate him. It's a big "fuck you." These people have been the butt of jokes for decades, and they notice. They know they are mocked as dumb, in-bred, ignorant, bigoted, small minded, etc.
- throwanem 1y ago
  > Why can't they extend this to their own country? Because they aren't a cohesive movement and, without someone to hate, could not manage even the rather poor pretense of unity with which they occasionally pretend to care to bother. If they were capable of taking your advice, they wouldn't need it.
  - api 1y ago
    You have a good point here, and I'm afraid it's a human universal: humans are tribal and have a hard time forming coalitions and movements without someone to hate. Being "universally woke" would mean not hating anyone, and that makes it hard to unite. We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?
Workaccount2 1y ago
Not to diminish the achievement, but the chosen metrics seem pretty narrow. Why no mention of 5th grade reading level? Or second grade math? It gives the impression that the author is extrapolating from outliers rather and identifying a student body wide trend. Especially when no insight to what is driving this is given.
- alwa 1y ago
  Those are the only grade levels at which the NAEP is administered. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.asp... I’d be more worried if the author stepped beyond their scope, and went from observing results to speculating without evidence about what drove the changes. It seems like enough to say “here’s a big signal that goes counter to the stories we’ve been telling ourselves, it’s worth doing some work to figure out what’s going on.”
- etempleton 1y ago
  Certain grade levels are considered milestones and national tests are associated.
- buggerme 1y ago
  The metric of “random social media commenter” is too narrow to have impact. But you put it out there. The smart people doing it again…ignoring their own statistical irrelevance while challenging other’s statistics as somehow inconsequential.
yogurt-male 1y ago
As someone who attended public school in Mississippi in the 2000s, this is deeply surprising to me. The quality of education I received was abysmal, and at that time there was no sign of anything turning around. Glad that the next generation is getting something better.
- mindtricks 1y ago
  I attended in the late 80s, early 90s and originally thought my education was subpar relative to other states. As I got older, I realized my fundamentals were solid and I'd constantly be surprised by what people people didn't know that I learned in middle school. That said, I could see the gap when it came to others who participated in Honors or more advanced topics in high school. This is a smaller subset of most school's students, but I walked away with a sense that education in these topics at other schools were more rigorous.
philo_sophia 1y ago
I think the comments on the article are a fair critique. Notably that this single metric for educational outcome is not as important as the author is suggesting. Also, Maine has a huge drop on that chart I'm assuming from COVID. I don't think this is southern states catching up. I think it was just them outperforming during COVID potentially. Whether or not that will last, we will see.
- svachalek 1y ago
  You mean "At the end of the day, it's cognitive ability, not instruction method, that wins the day in the long term."? Which in the context of the comment is just blatant racism wrapped in some kind of incoherent triple redundant wrapper.
  - BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
    There are reasons other than race for some children to do better in school than others.
sepositus 1y ago
I'm still trying to pinpoint exactly why Oregon has some of the worst scores in the country (I believe it ranked dead-last this year when adjusted for socio-economic factors). When I see what's going on around me, I can only think it's somewhat related to broken family's and undisciplined kids. The stuff that my kids come home and tell me is happening in school is pretty mind blowing. I've also noticed a complete reversal on any form of discipline. There's not even detention anymore. It seems in the name of acceptance we're taking in all kids, even ones exhibiting extremely aggressive behaviors, and then doing absolutely nothing to curb those behaviors.
- ajross 1y ago
  I have kids in Oregon public schools. The schools themselves (in the sense of classroom education) are fine, for the most part. But education is very underfunded (especially relative to the tax base). So kids like mine do just fine, but anyone who needs outreach or extra support tends not to get it. That hurts badly on aggregate test scores, but not so much on college acceptance performance. So it's hard to correct, politically. And no, it's not the lack of discipline. In fact my experience is that the peer culture around my kids is much, much safer and respectful than what I saw growing up. And I went to what at the time was the consensus-best public school system in the country!
  - megaman821 1y ago
    Oregon public schools are underfunded compared to Mississippi? Some of the worst performing schools in my area have the most funding per pupil. A bucket of money doesn't solve bad systems, bad administartors, bad teachers and bad parents.
    - ajross 1y ago
      > Oregon public schools are underfunded compared to Mississippi? No, but they outperform Mississippi too. The article is about the first derivative, not the signal.
    - danans 1y ago
lastofthemojito 1y ago
I guess I don't really get the basis of this blog post. I've heard of the Mississippi Miracle several times among my blue state teacher friends - it feels like it is in fact en vogue to talk about it and try to figure out how to emulate it. Do a search for Mississippi Miracle for countless articles and posts.
- altcognito 1y ago
  The basis is likely to create engagement with all the "blue states won't listen" and "Democrats are AWOL" commentary.
ajross 1y ago
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jobs_throwaway 1y ago
BIG caveat that these scores are adjusted for gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status. In terms of raw scores, Mississippi is still in the bottom 10. Not really that impressive IMO.
- pc86 1y ago
  It's not impressive if you don't understand statistics I guess. You want to measure the impact of educational policies on students. So you control for other factors that influence educational outcomes, and you try to eliminate those effects. Girls do better than boys on most testing. Asians do better than other races. Free & reduced lunch kids do worse. Special education and ESL students obviously do worse. So of course you're going to adjust for these populations. The only reason you look at the raw scores of a rural district outside Biloxi that is 70% black and compare that to the raw scores of a suburban San Francisco district that is 50% asian and 35% white is that you either don't understand math or you're more interested in making a political argument than an educational policy one.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    But unless you control for it very, very carefully, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs cause kids to do worse" - which isn't supported by the evidence, because there may be other factors that coincide with those who are eligible for them. You'd have to do something like take the high-performing SF district and give half the students, randomly selected, free lunches.
    - pc86 1y ago
      Reduced-price lunches are a proxy for socioeconomic status. That it's a proxy means it isn't perfect but we're talking about the entire country you can absolutely draw conclusions from it based on the mountains of data we have available.
    - lolinder 1y ago
      > unless you control for it very, very carefully, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs cause kids to do worse" Nonsense, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs are correlated with kids who do worse", which they absolutely are!
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
So... uh... this seems to say "if you eliminate all the test scores that are bad, Mississippi only has good test scores left." By "adjusting" student test scores based on age, gender, ethnicity and whether or not they get a school lunch, what they're really saying is "there are a lot of poor kids who qualify for school lunches" rather than "there are a lot of poor kids who did remarkably well on standardized tests."
paxys 1y ago
So if you remove all the bad test scores from the data set you can show that Mississippi actually has great test scores. Top tier analysis.
BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
This article is advocating that using poverty-adjusted scores is a better way to assess student education levels. I just can't agree with that. "Your children aren't just dumber, they're also poorer" feels like a very spicy way to elevate the status of a state to me. > Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. > When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results for student demographics... Clicking through to the Urban Institute, one then finds: > comparing states’ NAEP scores is misleading for many purposes because states serve very different student populations. For example, more than 20 percent of children live in poverty in Alabama and Mississippi, compared with less than 10 percent in New Hampshire and Vermont Pardon me, but 20% of your children living in poverty is my personal exact definition for an embarrassing cultural backwater. If adjusting for poverty is so important, maybe the biggest problem is governments deciding intentionally to let children suffer so much from poverty! And if poverty and hunger are so strongly connected to education outcomes, which state just again for the second year in a row rejected school lunch funding for poor families? https://mississippitoday.org/2025/02/03/mississippi-again-turns-down-millions-of-dollars-to-feed-low-income-kids-during-summer-months/ https://mississippitoday.org/2025/02/03/mississippi-again-tu... "Oh but our schools are good actually!" "Oh but your children are starving and you think that's fine!"
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- lolinder 1y ago
  > "Your children aren't just dumber, they're also poorer" feels like a very spicy way to elevate the status of a state to me. Would this comment have been made if we were talking about The Bronx instead of Mississippi? The author is saying that given the poverty status of the state it's remarkable how quickly they've been able to turn their education system around. A really good school in The Bronx will have lower scores than a mediocre school in Upper Manhattan, but that doesn't mean that we should all go out and emulate the mediocre school in Upper Manhattan. The really good school in The Bronx is obviously the better model. The author's initial point is correct, though: because it's Mississippi we're talking about that intuition doesn't apply. It's okay to diss on Mississippi for being Mississippi.
pc86 1y ago
I am much less interested in why MS schools are doing so much better - which don't get me wrong, is great, and I hope studied and modeled in better-funded states - than I am in why other schools are doing worse. Taking that first chart into account, if Maine stayed around a ~225 for the last 20 years, and Mississippi went from 203 to 220, that's great for Mississippi but not necessarily an indictment of anything Maine is doing wrong. But not only do you have Mississippi gaining an impressive amount of ground, you have 4th graders in 2024 Maine 1.5 grade levels worse than 4th graders in 2004 Maine. If I was an educational policymaker in Maine I'd be looking for who to fire and it'd probably take a bit of work to convince the answer isn't "everyone."
- cyberlurker 1y ago
  What if the reason is external to the school? Hmm, what has changed between 2004 and 2024? We have devices and experiences that are medically classified as addictive. It can also be home life stuff, it’s kind of a difficult time for a lot of people. We could have the best trained and supported teachers in the world, but they are up against completely different challenges. I’m not saying we can never fire anyone. But you suggesting that if we don’t like an outcome we get rid of someone without understanding the entire problem is plain dumb.
  - pc86 1y ago
    That could very well explain the decline in Maine's scores. Do we see that decline elsewhere (other than Mississippi at least)? Maybe we can add this to the multi-page list of reasons to ban phones in schools bell-to-bell.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  I can tell you why with reasonable certainty. When my mom became a Maine teacher in 1990, the starting pay was $28k, for a part time position. By her first retirement in 2022, she was making $48k, for full time work, in a more expensive school district, with more responsibilities (including creating the entire lesson plan and running the department). What was inflation during that time frame? So basically, Maine can't afford any teachers. It's been coasting on the same 65 year old teachers it had back then. The few new teachers you DO get in rural Maine are the ones that aren't smart enough to notice that they're getting fucked, or are morons screaming at 12 year olds that the vaccine is poison and masks will kill them, or are literal sociopaths who write 17 page (not exaggeration) manifestos full of spelling mistakes and grammar errors due to a perceived slight. Despite that man being an obvious wacko, the administration we spend so much on left my mom high and dry to fend for herself, and it could have destroyed her career and reputation as one of the best teachers in the area. A school in the Kennebunkport area convinced her out of retirement with a cool $80k a year and strong agreements towards getting her (state program) retirement fully funded. Everyone in the US loves to harp that "oh we've spent so much on education" but we have not. We have spent immensely on paying a bunch of MBAs to "administrate". Superintendents are politicians, and do not do anything useful for schools. That superintendent spent tens of thousands of dollars on "smartboards" while the teachers used VHS tapes bought in the 80s to teach things. Teachers want supplies, not gimmicks. But don't worry, that Superintendent will use his political connections to assure everyone that the millions a dirt poor community has handed to him totally isn't a waste, and that buying a heated turf soccer field in fucking northern maine wasn't a waste, and the local numbnuts will continue to blame "woke liberals". It definitely has nothing to do with talented teachers who worked their asses off for 40 years getting jack and shit while their bosses drive Mercedes and buy their third house.
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
This all feels a bit astroturfed. Is their increase in 4th grade student reading scores still there if you count the kids that they made resit grade 3 if they failed to meet literacy standards as 4th graders? I quickly skimmed a few reports and articles and the lack of clarity on that point makes me suspicious.
- toast0 1y ago
  I imagine the 2nd year 3rd graders aren't tested since the tests are only administered at certain grades. But... if repeating 3rd grade leads to better test results in 4th grade, it may lead to better educational outcomes? You'd hope that the state would also be looking into the rate of repeating and how to do interventions to reduce that rate. Personally, I've never been a fan of test scores as presented as an indicator of school quality. I'd like to see something like a delta of a test at the beginning of the year and the end of the year; of the kids that were in this school for a full school year, how much 'academic progress' did they make? Conceivably, you could match up children's scores from 4th and 8th grade and do it that way, for students that stayed in one school system for 4 years, but I've never seen that done. Testing is expensive, so I understand why it's not done; but it might also be nice for teachers to have an early in the year test result for their students so they can lesson plan around what the class may have missed. I know there's ways to do that outside standardized tests, too.
- deleted 1y ago
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silverlake 1y ago
If you look at the full table of NAEP scores, you see the differences are not that much. 8th grade reading is 245(WV)-266(MA). That's 20 point spread, where NAEP goes to 500 pts. A 4% difference between the best and worst state is insignificant. They all suck because they are at 50% of the scale.
- happyopossum 1y ago
  From TFA - a 10 point gap in NAEP represents approximately one grade level, so your 21 point spread is the difference between 3rd and 5th grades.
miltonlost 1y ago
None of this article says WHY Mississippi changed, just that it did and Blu States should emulate. But emulate what? School vouchers? Feeding children before school? The blog doesn't say, just implies that it's Republicans doing.... The analysis is lacking and surface level and right-wing water carrying.
otterley 1y ago
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sollewitt 1y ago
There is a similar effect in parts of SFUSD where some of the schools with more poor students are bucking trends: https://sfparents.org/sfkidscantwait/ https://sfparents.org/sfkidscantwait/ (SFUSD overall has something like a 10% poverty rate and a 3% marginally housed population, so I think the comparison is fair) In our school, we saw a lot of outdated teaching materials - we got our kids hooked on Alphablocks - a BBC funded children’s education program that teaches phonics, because it seemed like there were no explicit classes in phonics. The debate over phonics is settled, they work - I understand the situation here is improving. The math curriculum has improved too, they are adopting techniques from Japan, but I suspect the limiting factor there is teachers’ math discomfort. In the end it’s been the parents holding the school system and elected officials accountable that has spurred change. I bet behind the great numbers in Mississippi is a sea of under-appreciated moms.
- sbuttgereit 1y ago
  I can support your Alphablocks recommend. But even more than that I recommend Numberblocks. My kid loved that show and was doing multiplication by kindergarten, because he eagerly learned it from the show. And for a young kid's maths television program, some of the scripts and songs were surprisingly strong.
nunez 1y ago
Interesting factoids from /r/teaching, /r/teachers and /r/mississippi: - Mississippi's Mississippi Excellent in Teaching Program was given a ~$13M grant in 2013 so that students who attend MSU or University of Mississippi can get their entire tuition written off if they agree to teach in the MS Public School System for five years. On paper, this looks like a super sweet program. I don't recall any other state having anything similar to this outside of compensation accelerators like Teach for America (only a two year commitment) or NYC's Math for America (very selective). See MSU's METP benefits: https://www.metp.msstate.edu/about-metp/benefits https://www.metp.msstate.edu/about-metp/benefits. Five years is a long-enough time to convince people who would otherwise not consider a career in education to stay. - However, MS is still a hellscape of an environment to teach in, per the comments in this (https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/teaching/comments/sf4rpc/mississippi_teachers/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/teaching/comments/sf4rpc/...) and this (https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18zcgiv/teacher_salaries_by_us_state_adjusted_for_cost_of/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/...). As of 2024, MS is still dead last in teacher pay. Caps out (https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2025/03/Salary-Schedule-for-FY26.pdf https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2025/03/Salar...) at $71k for 35+ years experience and "AAAA" experience (i.e. you have a Ph.D; see here: https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OA/OTL/Teacher%20Center/guidelines_for_mississippi_educator_licensure_k-12_april_2021.pdf https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OA/OT...). - MS also instituted a policy in 2013 wherein third-graders who fail a state-level reading test are held back. This has led to an increase of teachers teaching "to the test" to decrease retention rates. The "comeback" that's documented here is for 4th grade reading performance. Unsurprisingly, the data does not show maintained levels of performance at 8th grade, as documented here (https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2023/07/mississippis-miracle-has-revolution.html https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2023/07/mississippis-miracl...). Some are even claiming that the MS DOE manipulates test scores to make themselves look better than they are! More here: https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/mississippi/comments/1idd5eq/naep_mississippi_fourth_graders_rank_1_in_reading/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/mississippi/comments/1idd... My take? Improvements in student performance (at one grade level!) without corresponding improvements in teaching conditions or increased state-level committment to public education is a huge smell.
clircle 1y ago
You first have to convince me that it makes sense to (1) do any adjustment in the first place, the adjustments are not reality, and (2) that the chosen adjustment method is the correct one.
beej71 1y ago
This is the one piece of meat in the article: > Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off. Definitely worth a deeper dive.
arh68 1y ago
> Underperforming states escape scrutiny. Our biases prevent us from asking, for instance, what’s going on in Oregon. Or Vermont. Or Maryland. Uh, is this true ? I feel like there's been plenty of asking as to why Oregon schools are as bad as they are. Going back 10 years. Hell, maybe 30+ years. It's not a secret. I've never felt we-can't-talk-about-it, as the author claims. I'm glad Mississippi is making progress, but a lot of the article reads like a straw man (or, weirdly, a reading comprehension test)

104 points by pkrecker 1y ago

I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.

xadhominemx 1y ago
I think it was because the demographic adjustments move scores for black students higher and scores for white students lower. If unadjusted scores for white students and black students are converging over time, that would explain why Mississippi looks so strong compared to states like Maine, Vermont, and Oregon in the time series.
- bitshiftfaced 1y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, they compare children of similar demographics. This controls for how different states have different percentages of varying demographics. Based on this, I don't see how the convergence of performance over time could explain why Mississippi would be doing well.
  - xadhominemx 1y ago
    Depends if the corrections are static or dynamic. The states with the worst relative moves are all super white, while the states with the best relative moves have large black populations. That suggests something strange is going on with the adjustment.
    - bitshiftfaced 1y ago
      If state A has 30% reduced school lunches and state B has 5%, then I don't think it would be strange to see the adjustment resulting in an increase in state A's ranking relative to state B. For example, in the original raw scoring method, if state B has lower quality education, then it may still outperform state A due to the difference in demographics.
      - xadhominemx 1y ago
        Yes I understand the reason why to adjust for demographics, but if the demographic adjustment results in adjusted results for white states falling off a cliff while more diverse states hold steady, there’s probably something funky going on with the adjustment.
pixl97 1y ago
Yea, the information here is really limited and from only a single source. And in the same sense the entire article was still damning to US education. Yes, Mississippi got better, but is still not at Maine 2019 levels. Also 2020 was covid which we all know had huge upsets in education, so I'd like to see a much broader view among different states to know if this is just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
derbOac 1y ago
Yeah I think the phenomenon is interesting and important to be aware of, but the berating political take isn't really that helpful or productive in my opinion — even though it ostensibly attempts to be unbiased in its criticisms. It would have been more productive to dive into what is working and what might be irrelevant, and how it might or might not generalize to other places. There is a kind of implicit spin to it. I think it's worth a read, but it's also worth reading and thinking a bit about some of the sources it criticizes. For example, in this piece the author admits that some of the sleight of hand can't account for increases in reading per se: https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi... However, if you think about it, the sleight of hand can still make the scores look better than they are overall. So while the improvements might still be valid, the comparisons to other states might not be — which is part of the primary substance of the essay. I'm often disappointed in discussions about educational policy or curricula because so much of it has this cargo cult feel to it, masking political leanings with "objective" results. I say this about a lot of it, not just left or right-leaning discussions. It's almost like someone needs to make a fill-in-the-blank checklist critique of educational discussions (testing, admissions) like the old ones about email alternatives: focusing on means and not variances, attributing progress to everything in a basket of changes rather than trying to figure out which one(s) were responsible, ignoring who the students actually are, ignoring the counterfactual questions that are the elephants in the room, focusing on single outcome variables in isolation, etc. I always feel like almost everyone is cherry picking data to make a case.
- bombcar 1y ago
  My repeated experience has been that the teachers on the ground (actually teaching the classes) know exactly what they'd like to do to improve things, but they instead have to implement whatever new policy has flowed down from who knows where this year or decade. (An actionable example of a policy that parents can implement today is "redshirting" where you hold a child with a late birthday back a year in pre-kindergarten)
  - derbOac 1y ago
selfselfgo 1y ago
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WaitWaitWha 1y ago
I think it is sprinkled throughout the article: e.g., the section "Edu-Snobbery Hurts Us All", "Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off."

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.
- 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.

api 1y ago

"Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated." Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious. I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke. WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to include rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture, and all the rest of what the American academic (mostly urban, mostly middle class to wealthy, mostly coastal) left culture considers out-groups. DEI should include the "deplorables." (I knew Hillary Clinton was going to lose when she said that. What cringe.) An American woke social liberal would not go to India and immediately start trashing rural conservative Hindu culture. They would not travel to Saudi Arabia and start trashing poor rural Muslims for having views they disagree with. They're even willing to stick up for Palestinian Muslims in spite of their social views. Why can't they extend this to their own country? What would sticking up for the "deplorables" look like? First, it would be to stop trashing them. Then it would be to stick up for their rights and defend their needs and go to bat for them against the very real social and economic adversaries that they face. Talk about the opioid epidemic. Talk about the hollowing out of the rural economy. Propose solutions. You don't win friends or change peoples' minds by mocking and bashing people. That just makes them double down out of spite. There's a very large -- probably double digit -- percentage of die-hard MAGA Trump supporters whose real reason for supporting him is because comparatively-rich white coastal educated liberals hate him. It's a big "fuck you." These people have been the butt of jokes for decades, and they notice. They know they are mocked as dumb, in-bred, ignorant, bigoted, small minded, etc.

throwanem 1y ago
> Why can't they extend this to their own country? Because they aren't a cohesive movement and, without someone to hate, could not manage even the rather poor pretense of unity with which they occasionally pretend to care to bother. If they were capable of taking your advice, they wouldn't need it.
- api 1y ago
  You have a good point here, and I'm afraid it's a human universal: humans are tribal and have a hard time forming coalitions and movements without someone to hate. Being "universally woke" would mean not hating anyone, and that makes it hard to unite. We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?

Workaccount2 1y ago

Not to diminish the achievement, but the chosen metrics seem pretty narrow. Why no mention of 5th grade reading level? Or second grade math? It gives the impression that the author is extrapolating from outliers rather and identifying a student body wide trend. Especially when no insight to what is driving this is given.

alwa 1y ago
Those are the only grade levels at which the NAEP is administered. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.asp... I’d be more worried if the author stepped beyond their scope, and went from observing results to speculating without evidence about what drove the changes. It seems like enough to say “here’s a big signal that goes counter to the stories we’ve been telling ourselves, it’s worth doing some work to figure out what’s going on.”
etempleton 1y ago
Certain grade levels are considered milestones and national tests are associated.
buggerme 1y ago
The metric of “random social media commenter” is too narrow to have impact. But you put it out there. The smart people doing it again…ignoring their own statistical irrelevance while challenging other’s statistics as somehow inconsequential.

yogurt-male 1y ago

As someone who attended public school in Mississippi in the 2000s, this is deeply surprising to me. The quality of education I received was abysmal, and at that time there was no sign of anything turning around. Glad that the next generation is getting something better.

mindtricks 1y ago
I attended in the late 80s, early 90s and originally thought my education was subpar relative to other states. As I got older, I realized my fundamentals were solid and I'd constantly be surprised by what people people didn't know that I learned in middle school. That said, I could see the gap when it came to others who participated in Honors or more advanced topics in high school. This is a smaller subset of most school's students, but I walked away with a sense that education in these topics at other schools were more rigorous.

philo_sophia 1y ago

I think the comments on the article are a fair critique. Notably that this single metric for educational outcome is not as important as the author is suggesting. Also, Maine has a huge drop on that chart I'm assuming from COVID. I don't think this is southern states catching up. I think it was just them outperforming during COVID potentially. Whether or not that will last, we will see.

svachalek 1y ago
You mean "At the end of the day, it's cognitive ability, not instruction method, that wins the day in the long term."? Which in the context of the comment is just blatant racism wrapped in some kind of incoherent triple redundant wrapper.
- BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
  There are reasons other than race for some children to do better in school than others.

sepositus 1y ago

I'm still trying to pinpoint exactly why Oregon has some of the worst scores in the country (I believe it ranked dead-last this year when adjusted for socio-economic factors). When I see what's going on around me, I can only think it's somewhat related to broken family's and undisciplined kids. The stuff that my kids come home and tell me is happening in school is pretty mind blowing. I've also noticed a complete reversal on any form of discipline. There's not even detention anymore. It seems in the name of acceptance we're taking in all kids, even ones exhibiting extremely aggressive behaviors, and then doing absolutely nothing to curb those behaviors.

ajross 1y ago
I have kids in Oregon public schools. The schools themselves (in the sense of classroom education) are fine, for the most part. But education is very underfunded (especially relative to the tax base). So kids like mine do just fine, but anyone who needs outreach or extra support tends not to get it. That hurts badly on aggregate test scores, but not so much on college acceptance performance. So it's hard to correct, politically. And no, it's not the lack of discipline. In fact my experience is that the peer culture around my kids is much, much safer and respectful than what I saw growing up. And I went to what at the time was the consensus-best public school system in the country!
- megaman821 1y ago
  Oregon public schools are underfunded compared to Mississippi? Some of the worst performing schools in my area have the most funding per pupil. A bucket of money doesn't solve bad systems, bad administartors, bad teachers and bad parents.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > Oregon public schools are underfunded compared to Mississippi? No, but they outperform Mississippi too. The article is about the first derivative, not the signal.
  - danans 1y ago

lastofthemojito 1y ago

I guess I don't really get the basis of this blog post. I've heard of the Mississippi Miracle several times among my blue state teacher friends - it feels like it is in fact en vogue to talk about it and try to figure out how to emulate it. Do a search for Mississippi Miracle for countless articles and posts.

altcognito 1y ago
The basis is likely to create engagement with all the "blue states won't listen" and "Democrats are AWOL" commentary.

ajross 1y ago

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jobs_throwaway 1y ago

BIG caveat that these scores are adjusted for gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status. In terms of raw scores, Mississippi is still in the bottom 10. Not really that impressive IMO.

pc86 1y ago
It's not impressive if you don't understand statistics I guess. You want to measure the impact of educational policies on students. So you control for other factors that influence educational outcomes, and you try to eliminate those effects. Girls do better than boys on most testing. Asians do better than other races. Free & reduced lunch kids do worse. Special education and ESL students obviously do worse. So of course you're going to adjust for these populations. The only reason you look at the raw scores of a rural district outside Biloxi that is 70% black and compare that to the raw scores of a suburban San Francisco district that is 50% asian and 35% white is that you either don't understand math or you're more interested in making a political argument than an educational policy one.
- bombcar 1y ago
  But unless you control for it very, very carefully, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs cause kids to do worse" - which isn't supported by the evidence, because there may be other factors that coincide with those who are eligible for them. You'd have to do something like take the high-performing SF district and give half the students, randomly selected, free lunches.
  - pc86 1y ago
    Reduced-price lunches are a proxy for socioeconomic status. That it's a proxy means it isn't perfect but we're talking about the entire country you can absolutely draw conclusions from it based on the mountains of data we have available.
  - lolinder 1y ago
    > unless you control for it very, very carefully, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs cause kids to do worse" Nonsense, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs are correlated with kids who do worse", which they absolutely are!

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

So... uh... this seems to say "if you eliminate all the test scores that are bad, Mississippi only has good test scores left." By "adjusting" student test scores based on age, gender, ethnicity and whether or not they get a school lunch, what they're really saying is "there are a lot of poor kids who qualify for school lunches" rather than "there are a lot of poor kids who did remarkably well on standardized tests."

paxys 1y ago

So if you remove all the bad test scores from the data set you can show that Mississippi actually has great test scores. Top tier analysis.

BugsJustFindMe 1y ago

This article is advocating that using poverty-adjusted scores is a better way to assess student education levels. I just can't agree with that. "Your children aren't just dumber, they're also poorer" feels like a very spicy way to elevate the status of a state to me. > Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. > When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results for student demographics... Clicking through to the Urban Institute, one then finds: > comparing states’ NAEP scores is misleading for many purposes because states serve very different student populations. For example, more than 20 percent of children live in poverty in Alabama and Mississippi, compared with less than 10 percent in New Hampshire and Vermont Pardon me, but 20% of your children living in poverty is my personal exact definition for an embarrassing cultural backwater. If adjusting for poverty is so important, maybe the biggest problem is governments deciding intentionally to let children suffer so much from poverty! And if poverty and hunger are so strongly connected to education outcomes, which state just again for the second year in a row rejected school lunch funding for poor families? https://mississippitoday.org/2025/02/03/mississippi-again-turns-down-millions-of-dollars-to-feed-low-income-kids-during-summer-months/ https://mississippitoday.org/2025/02/03/mississippi-again-tu... "Oh but our schools are good actually!" "Oh but your children are starving and you think that's fine!"

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lolinder 1y ago
> "Your children aren't just dumber, they're also poorer" feels like a very spicy way to elevate the status of a state to me. Would this comment have been made if we were talking about The Bronx instead of Mississippi? The author is saying that given the poverty status of the state it's remarkable how quickly they've been able to turn their education system around. A really good school in The Bronx will have lower scores than a mediocre school in Upper Manhattan, but that doesn't mean that we should all go out and emulate the mediocre school in Upper Manhattan. The really good school in The Bronx is obviously the better model. The author's initial point is correct, though: because it's Mississippi we're talking about that intuition doesn't apply. It's okay to diss on Mississippi for being Mississippi.

pc86 1y ago

I am much less interested in why MS schools are doing so much better - which don't get me wrong, is great, and I hope studied and modeled in better-funded states - than I am in why other schools are doing worse. Taking that first chart into account, if Maine stayed around a ~225 for the last 20 years, and Mississippi went from 203 to 220, that's great for Mississippi but not necessarily an indictment of anything Maine is doing wrong. But not only do you have Mississippi gaining an impressive amount of ground, you have 4th graders in 2024 Maine 1.5 grade levels worse than 4th graders in 2004 Maine. If I was an educational policymaker in Maine I'd be looking for who to fire and it'd probably take a bit of work to convince the answer isn't "everyone."

cyberlurker 1y ago
What if the reason is external to the school? Hmm, what has changed between 2004 and 2024? We have devices and experiences that are medically classified as addictive. It can also be home life stuff, it’s kind of a difficult time for a lot of people. We could have the best trained and supported teachers in the world, but they are up against completely different challenges. I’m not saying we can never fire anyone. But you suggesting that if we don’t like an outcome we get rid of someone without understanding the entire problem is plain dumb.
- pc86 1y ago
  That could very well explain the decline in Maine's scores. Do we see that decline elsewhere (other than Mississippi at least)? Maybe we can add this to the multi-page list of reasons to ban phones in schools bell-to-bell.
mrguyorama 1y ago
I can tell you why with reasonable certainty. When my mom became a Maine teacher in 1990, the starting pay was $28k, for a part time position. By her first retirement in 2022, she was making $48k, for full time work, in a more expensive school district, with more responsibilities (including creating the entire lesson plan and running the department). What was inflation during that time frame? So basically, Maine can't afford any teachers. It's been coasting on the same 65 year old teachers it had back then. The few new teachers you DO get in rural Maine are the ones that aren't smart enough to notice that they're getting fucked, or are morons screaming at 12 year olds that the vaccine is poison and masks will kill them, or are literal sociopaths who write 17 page (not exaggeration) manifestos full of spelling mistakes and grammar errors due to a perceived slight. Despite that man being an obvious wacko, the administration we spend so much on left my mom high and dry to fend for herself, and it could have destroyed her career and reputation as one of the best teachers in the area. A school in the Kennebunkport area convinced her out of retirement with a cool $80k a year and strong agreements towards getting her (state program) retirement fully funded. Everyone in the US loves to harp that "oh we've spent so much on education" but we have not. We have spent immensely on paying a bunch of MBAs to "administrate". Superintendents are politicians, and do not do anything useful for schools. That superintendent spent tens of thousands of dollars on "smartboards" while the teachers used VHS tapes bought in the 80s to teach things. Teachers want supplies, not gimmicks. But don't worry, that Superintendent will use his political connections to assure everyone that the millions a dirt poor community has handed to him totally isn't a waste, and that buying a heated turf soccer field in fucking northern maine wasn't a waste, and the local numbnuts will continue to blame "woke liberals". It definitely has nothing to do with talented teachers who worked their asses off for 40 years getting jack and shit while their bosses drive Mercedes and buy their third house.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

This all feels a bit astroturfed. Is their increase in 4th grade student reading scores still there if you count the kids that they made resit grade 3 if they failed to meet literacy standards as 4th graders? I quickly skimmed a few reports and articles and the lack of clarity on that point makes me suspicious.

toast0 1y ago
I imagine the 2nd year 3rd graders aren't tested since the tests are only administered at certain grades. But... if repeating 3rd grade leads to better test results in 4th grade, it may lead to better educational outcomes? You'd hope that the state would also be looking into the rate of repeating and how to do interventions to reduce that rate. Personally, I've never been a fan of test scores as presented as an indicator of school quality. I'd like to see something like a delta of a test at the beginning of the year and the end of the year; of the kids that were in this school for a full school year, how much 'academic progress' did they make? Conceivably, you could match up children's scores from 4th and 8th grade and do it that way, for students that stayed in one school system for 4 years, but I've never seen that done. Testing is expensive, so I understand why it's not done; but it might also be nice for teachers to have an early in the year test result for their students so they can lesson plan around what the class may have missed. I know there's ways to do that outside standardized tests, too.
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silverlake 1y ago

If you look at the full table of NAEP scores, you see the differences are not that much. 8th grade reading is 245(WV)-266(MA). That's 20 point spread, where NAEP goes to 500 pts. A 4% difference between the best and worst state is insignificant. They all suck because they are at 50% of the scale.

happyopossum 1y ago
From TFA - a 10 point gap in NAEP represents approximately one grade level, so your 21 point spread is the difference between 3rd and 5th grades.

miltonlost 1y ago

None of this article says WHY Mississippi changed, just that it did and Blu States should emulate. But emulate what? School vouchers? Feeding children before school? The blog doesn't say, just implies that it's Republicans doing.... The analysis is lacking and surface level and right-wing water carrying.

otterley 1y ago

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sollewitt 1y ago

There is a similar effect in parts of SFUSD where some of the schools with more poor students are bucking trends: https://sfparents.org/sfkidscantwait/ https://sfparents.org/sfkidscantwait/ (SFUSD overall has something like a 10% poverty rate and a 3% marginally housed population, so I think the comparison is fair) In our school, we saw a lot of outdated teaching materials - we got our kids hooked on Alphablocks - a BBC funded children’s education program that teaches phonics, because it seemed like there were no explicit classes in phonics. The debate over phonics is settled, they work - I understand the situation here is improving. The math curriculum has improved too, they are adopting techniques from Japan, but I suspect the limiting factor there is teachers’ math discomfort. In the end it’s been the parents holding the school system and elected officials accountable that has spurred change. I bet behind the great numbers in Mississippi is a sea of under-appreciated moms.

sbuttgereit 1y ago
I can support your Alphablocks recommend. But even more than that I recommend Numberblocks. My kid loved that show and was doing multiplication by kindergarten, because he eagerly learned it from the show. And for a young kid's maths television program, some of the scripts and songs were surprisingly strong.

nunez 1y ago

Interesting factoids from /r/teaching, /r/teachers and /r/mississippi: - Mississippi's Mississippi Excellent in Teaching Program was given a ~$13M grant in 2013 so that students who attend MSU or University of Mississippi can get their entire tuition written off if they agree to teach in the MS Public School System for five years. On paper, this looks like a super sweet program. I don't recall any other state having anything similar to this outside of compensation accelerators like Teach for America (only a two year commitment) or NYC's Math for America (very selective). See MSU's METP benefits: https://www.metp.msstate.edu/about-metp/benefits https://www.metp.msstate.edu/about-metp/benefits. Five years is a long-enough time to convince people who would otherwise not consider a career in education to stay. - However, MS is still a hellscape of an environment to teach in, per the comments in this (https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/teaching/comments/sf4rpc/mississippi_teachers/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/teaching/comments/sf4rpc/...) and this (https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18zcgiv/teacher_salaries_by_us_state_adjusted_for_cost_of/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/...). As of 2024, MS is still dead last in teacher pay. Caps out (https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2025/03/Salary-Schedule-for-FY26.pdf https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2025/03/Salar...) at $71k for 35+ years experience and "AAAA" experience (i.e. you have a Ph.D; see here: https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OA/OTL/Teacher%20Center/guidelines_for_mississippi_educator_licensure_k-12_april_2021.pdf https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OA/OT...). - MS also instituted a policy in 2013 wherein third-graders who fail a state-level reading test are held back. This has led to an increase of teachers teaching "to the test" to decrease retention rates. The "comeback" that's documented here is for 4th grade reading performance. Unsurprisingly, the data does not show maintained levels of performance at 8th grade, as documented here (https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2023/07/mississippis-miracle-has-revolution.html https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2023/07/mississippis-miracl...). Some are even claiming that the MS DOE manipulates test scores to make themselves look better than they are! More here: https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/mississippi/comments/1idd5eq/naep_mississippi_fourth_graders_rank_1_in_reading/ https://reddit.idevicehacked.com/r/mississippi/comments/1idd... My take? Improvements in student performance (at one grade level!) without corresponding improvements in teaching conditions or increased state-level committment to public education is a huge smell.

clircle 1y ago

You first have to convince me that it makes sense to (1) do any adjustment in the first place, the adjustments are not reality, and (2) that the chosen adjustment method is the correct one.

beej71 1y ago

This is the one piece of meat in the article: > Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off. Definitely worth a deeper dive.

arh68 1y ago

> Underperforming states escape scrutiny. Our biases prevent us from asking, for instance, what’s going on in Oregon. Or Vermont. Or Maryland. Uh, is this true ? I feel like there's been plenty of asking as to why Oregon schools are as bad as they are. Going back 10 years. Hell, maybe 30+ years. It's not a secret. I've never felt we-can't-talk-about-it, as the author claims. I'm glad Mississippi is making progress, but a lot of the article reads like a straw man (or, weirdly, a reading comprehension test)