Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

And yet it does. Are we ready to deal?

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.

Mississippi is probably the top target. I don’t have to tell you why. You know about the poor health outcomes. The poverty. The corruption. The obesity. The confederacy stuff.

Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” because its horrible performance on so many metrics saves other states the embarrassment of finishing last. The term has been used since at least 1945.

Which has made it awkward in recent years as Mississippi has become the fastest improving school system in the country.

You read that right. Mississippi is taking names.

In 2003, only the District of Columbia had more fourth graders in the lowest achievement level on our national reading test (NAEP) than Mississippi.¹ By 2024, only four states had fewer.

When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results² for student demographics, this is where Mississippi ranked:

• Fourth grade math: 1st

• Fourth grade reading: 1st

• Eighth grade math: 1st

• Eighth grade reading: 4th³

How about Black students? The root of Mississippi’s bad reputation is its historically awful record on civil rights - including its refusal to integrate schools.

That was then.

Now, it has a different story to tell. Black students in Mississippi posted the third highest fourth grade reading scores in the nation. They walloped their counterparts in better-funded states. The average Black student in Mississippi performed about 1.5 grade levels ahead of the average Black student in Wisconsin. Just think about that for a moment. Wisconsin spends about 35 percent more per pupil to achieve worse results.

Mississippi has fellow southern stars. Louisiana was the only state to fully erase pandemic learning loss among fourth grade readers. It ranked in the top five for all four NAEP grades/subjects in the demographically adjusted results. Alabama was the only state whose fourth graders beat their pre-COVID performance in math. In years past, notable gains have been posted by Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

These successes have not been wholly unacknowledged. They have been dutifully and perfunctorily name-checked in news stories. Nonetheless, there has been, shall we say, a reluctance among national voices to extol Deep South examples as worthy of emulation by their so-called “better off” peers.⁴

You can’t go around saying Maine ought to visit Mississippi to learn how to teach reading. It’s insulting. You could ruin a cocktail party. After all, Maine has Kennebunkport. Mississippi has Biloxi.

But that’s exactly what should happen. Below are the reading scores for these two states over time. For context, 10 points on NAEP is approximately the equivalent of one grade level. In 2002, students in Mississippi were two years behind students in Maine. Today, they are about a year ahead.

Don’t you want to know how that happened? Me too.

There’s a much broader trend afoot. This spring, Paul Peterson and Michael Hartney showed that red states (as defined by 2024 presidential election votes) are overtaking their blue counterparts academically. In 2019, blue states had higher average NAEP scores on all four major tests (4th and 8th grade reading and math). By 2024, red states had taken the lead in three of the four.

With such striking patterns, one would expect some of these red states to be the hottest ticket in education. Reporters embedding in steamy southern capitals to write long form magazine profiles of crusading state chiefs. National commissions chaired by governors. Awards distributed at fancy black-tie dinners.

But none of that is happening. Because these are SEC states.

More often, there have been sloppy attempts at debunking Mississippi’s success. Some of them ran in national papers. Others were withdrawn when the authors realized they were based on flawed information.

This isn’t just wrong. It’s a problem. There are lessons for our education community and for both political parties.

Edu-Snobbery Hurts Us All

• We miss opportunities to help kids. I’m not saying we should go “full Finland” and turn Mississippi into a junket destination and object of hero worship. It’s not perfect.⁵ But we need to celebrate their thoughtful statewide strategy that has dramatically improved results without a colossal increase in spending. Their progress is not a fluke. It’s a clue.

• Underperforming states escape scrutiny. Our biases prevent us from asking, for instance, what’s going on in Oregon. Or Vermont. Or Maryland. There’s a case to be made that their instructional quality is among the weakest in the country based on their performance trends over the past decade. And yet, when’s the last time you heard them being pressed to defend their poor outcomes? They’re getting a pass.

• Our federal system becomes a weakness rather than a strength. Devolving most education authority to states theoretically allows innovation based on local needs. But it also presumes that successful practices will catch on with lagging states. That’s not happening. Instead, mediocre and low performing states are living in denial, cherry picking small wins to avoid confronting larger truths. This is one reason that the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015 and focused on reducing federal accountability, is increasingly seen as a colossal mistake.

• We waste money. Education spending has risen significantly over the past decade, partly due to COVID relief funding. But student outcomes have not risen. In fact, they’ve gotten worse. When states refuse to learn from peers because of a condescending attitude, they pour resources into failed strategies - and then ask taxpayers for more. This (probably) can’t go on forever. Some elected officials are beginning to reach their limit.

Dear Democratic Party: Are You Paying Attention?

Blue states are losing population. Estimates vary, but states Kamala Harris won in 2024 will probably surrender 12 congressional seats - and electoral votes - after the next census.

Given that reality, Democrats picked a terrible time to go AWOL on the issue of education. Harris barely mentioned schools during her campaign and did not put forth any plan to address the incredible academic losses of the COVID era. What was once a double-digit lead in voter trust on education has now become a dead heat or a slight advantage for Republicans.

There is a future where blue states are left behind electorally, through declining clout, and educationally, through stubborn refusal to accept that a number of red states are solving important problems and expanding opportunity for kids while wealthier, complacent Democratic strongholds phone it in. If Republicans start running - and winning - on their education track records, look out.

A few politicians have caught on. Rahm Emanuel recently called on Democrats to apologize for the excessive length of pandemic school closures. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis described this as an “all-hands-on-deck” moment. Sen. Michael Bennet has hinted that party leaders need to step aside so a new generation of ideas can win back voters who are defecting. All three of them see education as an issue where Democrats ought to be winning - but aren’t. My guess is that successful future Democratic policies sound more like them and less like Brandon Johnson.

Republicans: Don’t Get Cocky

Success in education is hard to sustain. Time and distraction wreak havoc on gains that took decades to achieve. Ask Finland. Or Florida.

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.

But it won’t be easy for red states to continue their impressive run when President Trump is firing off scattershot executive orders advancing culture war priorities that have little to do with student learning. Governors and state chiefs are getting dizzy keeping up with the things they are supposed to do. Polling suggests that moves like cutting every possible position and program at the Department of Education are unpopular. This could go south - no pun intended - in a hurry… especially if Democrats wake up and remember that education policy is a natural winner for them.

Who’s the next Mississippi?

Not all the serious education players are in the Deep South. Two that you should watch - Indiana and Iowa - are midwestern states that Barack Obama won in 2008. More recently, though, they’ve gone for Donald Trump three times in a row.

Indiana and Iowa are already in the Urban Institute’s top 10 for at least one NAEP test. They have innovative superintendents who mean business. And they are committed to leveraging the flexibility the Trump administration has promised.

If they rock the next decade of NAEP results, will they be overlooked in the national conversation because they are too farm-y, too milquetoast, too difficult for coastal people to locate on a map?

Probably. And it will be our loss.

1. No shade to D.C. It has reduced its share of low performing readers even more than Mississippi since 2002 and has a strong claim to being the most improved jurisdiction over that time. It was the classic example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of higher standards for schools. More on the politics later in this piece.

2. Results account for: gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status.

3. If you are curious how Mississippi improved so much,

Chad Aldeman

did a great overview a few months ago. (If you don’t already get his newsletter, sign up.)

4. There are exceptions, of course. Vince Bielski recently wrote a detailed piece for RealClearInvestigations.

5. As just one example, Mississippi’s eighth grade reading results are not as impressive as its fourth grade outcomes.