Mississippi turned around its schools. Its secret: Tools Michigan abandoned

• Mississippi is now a Top 20 state for education after years near the bottom
• A dozen years ago, the state passed reforms and invested in improving 
• Michigan has tried similar efforts but abandoned them as its scores declined

JACKSON, MISS.  — Years ago, no matter the metric, Mississippi was at the bottom. 

Education and other low rankings were “perennial black eyes for the state,” said Michael Cormack Jr., deputy superintendent of Jackson Public Schools. 

Others knew it too.

“For whoever is No. 49, it’s always ‘Thank God for Mississippi’ because they can depend on us to be at the bottom,” said Albert Sykes, a Jackson native and education advocate.

Not anymore. 

Test scores have improved dramatically in the past 15 years, and Mississippi is now ranked as a Top 20 state for public education. Scores exceed Michigan’s across the spectrum, from Black and white students to poorer and richer ones.

Known as the Mississippi Miracle, the state’s improvement is a testament to tenacity, not originality. Over the past 20 years, Michigan adopted many of the same tools and accountability standards as Mississippi, only to abandon them for another plan.

While Michigan leaders talked about fixing education, Mississippi did it starting in 2013, approving and sticking with sometimes unpopular ideas like grading schools and holding back third graders who couldn’t read, while investing big in teacher training and literacy coaches. 

“People were fed up with being 50th,” said Cormack. There was “a lot of galvanizing energy just around the fact that more was possible.”

Related:

• Michigan spent big to fix schools. The result: Worse scores and plenty of blame
• Fact check: What’s true, false, misleading about Michigan’s education slide

Michigan experimented with grading schools and holding back students who were behind in reading — but not for long. In 2023, Democrats repealed the A-F school grading scale and the read-or-flunk law after fewer than five years of implementation.

To be sure, there are plenty of differences between the states.

Michigan has far more students, a divided electorate that changes state leadership often and stronger teacher unions. But Mississippi has a greater share of students who are poor, a barrier often associated with lower test scores.

Regardless, experts say Michigan is reaching a crisis point with education. Since the pandemic, Michigan’s learning-loss recovery in reading is among the worst in the nation, while Mississippi’s is among the best. 

“Mississippi did it all at once and had a really well laid-out plan…,” said Adrea Truckenmiller, a Michigan State University professor who previously trained Mississippi reading coaches on evidence-based reading instruction. 

“Whereas, Michigan was piecemeal. They’ve had a lot of similar efforts, but they've all been very piecemeal.”

Mississippi is now a model 

High expectations are the cornerstone of Mississippi’s turnaround.

Related:

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They’re demanded for students who must pass a test to move onto fourth grade, teachers who are tasked with providing evidence-based instruction and administrators whose schools are graded in part by student test scores.  

It’s a message driven home in the class mantra of student Olivia Bianca, an energetic 9-year old from Florence, who passed her test in the spring.

Third graders, we’ve got a lot of work to do today.

What if it gets too tough?

We gotta push through.

“It’s stuff that you would read in self-help books and motivational books for adults… it’s really advanced in what they are doing,” said her father, Bradley Bianca.

In Mississippi, teachers are expected to know how students learn to read using structured literacy strategies built on a body of research called the “science of reading.” This includes knowing what different sounds letters and blends of letters make and being able to understand the meaning of words and sentences.

In Mississippi, the vast majority of schools teach 1 of 5 state-approved literacy curricula. In Michigan, schools choose their own, and more than 400 are taught, a number that should decline with new laws that require the use of evidence-based instruction by 2027. 

Michigan is also ramping up efforts to improve literacy, including passing a law last year to include science of reading in schools, providing millions for literacy professional development for teachers and reimbursing districts who select an evidence-based curriculum. 

In both states, the science of reading training is optional, but it’s strongly encouraged in Mississippi and has wide buy-in from teachers, according to officials there.

“Once it started happening and everybody was saying how great it was and it was improving their teacher practices, then others caught on,” said Kymyona Burk, the former state literacy director and current senior policy fellow for early literacy at ExcelinEd.

The state spends about $15 million a year on literacy efforts.

While about a third of the size of Michigan, Mississippi spends a greater share of its state budget on education: about 43% ($3 billion total), compared to 28% for Michigan ($23 billion total.)

Among other things, the money pays to send literacy coaches to districts that need extra help and facilitate multiple tests throughout the year to ensure that students are prepared to pass third grade reading exams.

“The state goal for literacy is simple: we want kids proficient,” said Pearl Public School District Superintendent Chris Chism. “That’s every single school in the state; that’s every single principal, superintendent, that’s everybody in the state. Bottom line is, you can’t be successful in life unless you can read.”

New law becomes ‘gamechanger’ 

Mississippi’s reforms began with significant help from the Barksdale Reading Institute, a group that led several reading initiatives across the state. It was founded by James Barksdale, the former CEO of the web browser Netscape, who donated $100 million to the institute. 

In the early days, the institute assessed how reading was taught in classrooms, deployed reading specialists to schools and funded university faculty in teacher preparation programs, said Kelly Butler, former director of the institute.

The institute did not support holding students back but became an advocate of the third-grade retention law because it provided funding for necessary professional development, Butler said. 

“The law really was a game-changer. …  It's become the backbone of how we got off the bottom because it required a change in practice,” Butler said. 

A Mississippi child can qualify for a good cause exemption to move to the fourth grade if they pass a retake, have already been held back before, have an individualized education program for special education or are an English language learner. 

During the 2023-2024 school year, about three-fourths of students passed the test on the first try. After test retakes and exemptions were given, 6.3% of third grade students were held back. 

If the same percentage were held back in Michigan, about 6,500 third-graders would repeat the grade, rather than the approximately 400 who were held back in 2023 before the state dumped the law. 

Importantly, Mississippi acknowledges that some of those students could be retained for other reasons, since districts can have their own policies under local control.

Jackson Public Schools strongly encourages students who do not pass the third grade reading test to attend summer school. At the end of instruction, students retake the test, giving them a chance to move on to the fourth grade. 

At Galloway Elementary School, students work independently while teacher Amelita Ross walks around to each desk assessing students’ work. When it’s time to regroup, Ross calls out “1, 2, 3, all eyes on me,” each time students respond “4, 5, 6, our eyes are fixed.”

In the classroom of 12, students work on a passage about ice cream.

“What did you all notice about the types of ice cream they had?” Ross asks.

The district expects about 250 students will be held back, making up about 18% of its third-grade students. Another 427 students will move on to the fourth grade with good-cause exemptions. Of that group, roughly half are moving on to the fourth grade because they passed a retake of the test or an alternative assessment. 

The high-stakes nature of the test still concerns some educators and parents, echoing concerns that doomed the law in Michigan.

Truckenmiller said she is not a fan of holding students back. Studies on the effect of retention are mixed, but some show a greater risk of dropping out of high school. That concerns Cormack, but the possibility of a retention “focuses the mind and energy in terms of families and supports.” 

He said there’s more to be done to ensure students who repeat the third grade have a different experience the second time around. State leaders amended the law in 2016 to require school districts to provide individualized reading plans for students who go on to the fourth grade with a good-cause exemption. 

The district offers in-school and summer support to students who need to improve their English language arts skills. 

Change is difficult

In Rankin County in Mississippi, the district has emphasized teacher training and is now transitioning to a new literacy curriculum. 

In a complaint heard often in Michigan schools facing reforms, people in Rankin worried this was “another fad: “‘We’re going to try this and then we’re going to switch back to something different,’” said LaMarcus Norman, a principal of a second- and third-grade school in the county.

“You can't deny the results of students coming to you being able to read at a higher level, being able to comprehend at a higher level, and that’s because of the grades before you,” Norman said. 

It’s not about a specific test or program, said Kristen Langerman, an elementary principal in Rankin County. Rather, it’s giving students research, eliminating obstacles to teaching as the research shows and helping teachers supported along the way. 

“If you don’t have teachers willing to be a little bit uncomfortable and unlearn some things, then you’re not going to be able to shift that balance.” 

The Mississippi Association of Educators initially opposed the third-grade reading law because it was another test for students, said Darein Spann, president of the group. 

Similarly, in Michigan, the Michigan Education Association opposed the retention part of the law. 

The teachers’ union in Mississippi is far less powerful than its counterpart in Michigan. It is barred from collective bargaining and is a bit player in the state’s politics, which are dominated by Republicans.

The Mississippi education association’s political action committee donated less than $6,000 to candidates in 2024, compared to nearly $400,000 doled out by the Michigan Education Association, campaign records show.

Even so, love of the reading requirement is far from universal. 

“It sounds like great legislation and it sounds fabulous,” Pearl Superintendent Chism said. “But the people who make laws are not the people walking into the building and seeing the kids that are scared to death going in to take a test and that’s not what school should be.”

Chism said parents “hate” the test, and he isn’t a fan either. He said it puts too much pressure on kids and the quality of instruction would remain high even without that law. 

The differences between Michigan and Mississippi 

Education leaders in Michigan, as well as many states, are studying the gains in Mississippi. 

Michigan gubernatorial candidates are touting that state’s progress, and the state’s superintendent, Michael Rice, has spoken to counterparts in Mississippi about the reforms.

“Michigan's no different from any other state that we have talked to,” said Michelle Nowell, executive director of the Office of Elementary Education and Reading at the Mississippi Department of Education. 

“It's all about coaches, the coaching model and boots on the ground.” 

Mississippi has fewer districts than Michigan. Michigan districts can use state funds to pay for literacy professional development but each district has a lot of leeway in what they choose to make their priorities. 

Rice blames local control for low literacy scores.

Mississippi created a dedicated office within the Department of Education to implement the law and the office worked to build trust in schools where the state agency may have been seen as an enforcer rather than a partner, said Burk, the former state literacy director.

“Consistency is everything,” said Melissa McCray, director of elementary curriculum and instruction and professional development at Rankin County. “Being consistent and dedicated and believing that our children can achieve. And as everybody across the planet is seeing, they can.”

Parents know the stakes are high

Despite grumbling about the third-grade test, it’s a huge deal for parents in Mississippi.

When students take the test, parents want to “put out that red carpet,” said parent and teacher’s aide Natasha Bennett-Williams. On test day, volunteers cheer summer school students on.  

The night before the test in the spring, her daughter Kennedi, a talkative girl who loves the beach, got a dinner of her favorite things: macaroni and cheese, cabbage, candy ham, two types of cornbread and fried chicken, her mother said.

Bennett-Williams also got her daughter a tutor and cheered her on when a practice test went well.

It paid off: Kennedi passed the test on the first try. 

Does Bennett-Williams take pride in the reading gains of the state? 

“Yes, ma’am.”