'Mississippi miracle': Kids' reading scores have soared in Deep South states

https://apnews.com/article/reading-scores-phonics-mississippi-alabama-louisiana-5bdd5d6ff719b23faa37db2fb95d5004

by sebg • 3 years ago

40 22 3 years ago

apnews.com

unnamed76ri2• 3 years ago

I enjoy a nice positive news story.

One of the things briefly touched on in the article is that it seems these states have rediscovered teaching phonics.

Clubber• 3 years ago

Alabama invested heavily in training on the science of reading, then known as phonics, in the early 2000s, and scores rose.

When did the stop teaching that and why? I was thought that way in the 70s.

polski-g2• 3 years ago

According to teachers, they hate teaching phonics because their method is better because they invented it.

It's like programmers deciding to write a 3d game in Java instead of the known and functional method of c++.

csnover• 3 years ago

The link in the article about emphasising phonics[0] vaguely answers that question in the reverse, in terms of what was being taught instead; a podcast series from 2022 called Sold a Story[1] (transcripts also available at the link) gives a much more detailed answer about why.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43...

[1] https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

ChoGGi• 3 years ago

They started teaching three cues instead.

bsder2• 3 years ago

I am completely skeptical of this report.

Occam's razor suggests that when states that are actively at war with their teachers "magically" buck the statistical learning trends from everywhere else, the statistics are more likely to be falsified than the students improved so dramatically.

Especially when I see: "The states have consequences in place if schools don’t teach kids how to read, but also offer help to keep kids on track." The schools WILL pass those statistical measures someway, somehow if it means that the school loses funding or people lose their jobs.

hengestone• 3 years ago

What gets measured gets managed - Peter Drucker

cmcaleer2• 3 years ago

There’s a narrative that fits this buck in the trend: the curriculum simply rejected teachings that didn’t work.

Highly recommend reading about the ‘whole word’ v ‘phonics’ wars. Generations of children have been and continue to be left behind because an ineffective teaching style that doesn’t work became popular among America’s educators. Here’s an oped from a few years ago to get started with. It's honestly a bit depressing, but things have gotten better since and Mississippi is the proof of that.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...

Some reading specifically on how Mississippi is responsible for their own success. It wasn’t magic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/missis...

unnamed76ri2• 3 years ago

You could have a point with the consequences bit. We’ve seen government education policy fail in that way before.

The first part of your comment though seems to imply that you’ve digested some rather biased news reporting about some states. This article comes from the AP. Not exactly known for being a right leaning news outlet.

MandieD• 3 years ago

Also, what's the threshold for Special Ed, and are any such students exempt from testing?

However, I don't doubt that extra time training teachers to teach phonics would help their students turn those letters on the page into sensible sounds, and I'm happy for the students that seem to be helped here. My mother was a middle (and then high) school Spanish teacher, and her favorite party trick for her new students was to promise them that within the first week, they'd be able to read out most Spanish text put in front of them (albeit with a horrible accent). English pronunciation is notoriously inconsistent; Spanish is particularly consistent.

I'd love to know how long schools in Spanish-speaking countries spend on basic "pronounce the words on the page" level literacy compared to English-speaking ones.

rgbgraph• 3 years ago

Fair assumption; but anyone who’s done any research into the history of education in the U.S will tell you that phonics has vastly superior outcomes to “whole language” schemes.

Learning to read via phonics vs the alternative is like the difference between being born into wealth and opportunity, and being born a slave.

No hyperbole.

mrangle2• 3 years ago

States are not "at war" with teachers. The dramatic language is unhelpful to your argument.

The States in question implemented a literacy program of the type that is normally reserved for kids with minor disabilities whose parents have money to pay for it.

While there is always a chance of fraud when political pressure is on, I don't see where there is evidence of it that overtakes the variable of the extra reading support.

What this looks like to me is that the States in question found success by implementing a program that essentially is meant to make-up for the fact that impoverished kids are the most likely to receive the least reading instruction and access to books at home. Also, they are the least likely to be spoken to and to be read to from infancy.

These are the factors that are at the root of low literacy levels in impoverished communities. If there is success due to a school's effort, these are the fundamental factors that it is overcoming.

These kids are entering primary school at a massive literacy disadvantage, from day one. Statistically speaking, they are years behind kids whose parents have been promoting literacy from the cradle.

If these States want more success, they need to educate new parents in how to promote language development and literacy from birth.

amadeuspagel• 3 years ago

A nice illustration of the federalist model. Seems especially important for education because that's so vulnerable to fads.

'Mississippi miracle': Kids' reading scores have soared in Deep South states

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