In a delayed report to the legislature, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) recently cast doubt on Mississippi’s remarkable education gains — the very gains that inspired Minnesota’s own literacy reforms.
It is no secret that Mississippi’s progress has captured national attention, with other states seeking to replicate the sustained, systemic changes that have done a lot of good for a lot of students in The Magnolia State.
Minnesota is among the states that have taken notice. The 2023 READ Act was inspired by the success Mississippi has had with its early reading instruction. Even prior to this legislation, Minnesota followed Mississippi’s path by giving its educators access to LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) training starting in 2021. LETRS is a program designed to help educators learn the science of reading in both theory and practice.
Mississippi’s education gains did not happen overnight, or in a few years, or as a result of any single policy, which I break down here. This didn’t stop MDE from insisting in its report that such progress is fraudulent:
Some states, including Mississippi, have third grade retention policies that require students who are not yet reading at grade level to repeat third grade. Because these students are held back, they are a year older—or have had an extra year of schooling—by the time they reach fourth grade. This means they are no longer part of the same cohort of students who advanced on time. As a result, states with mandatory third grade retention can appear to perform better on fourth grade NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] reading scores, since a significant number of their lowest performing students are not included in the tested fourth grade group the following year.
And not observed outside of 4th grade:
While Mississippi has seen impressive improvements in grade four NAEP scores, this has not resulted in corresponding improvements in the higher grades. Despite over 10 years of science of reading legislation and implementation, eighth grade scores have remained flat and below the national average.
MDE isn’t the first to make such claims. Others have as well, essentially stating, we don’t believe you.
But thorough articles and reports have debunked the skeptics and critics, letting two decades of data confirm Mississippi’s gains are real and long-running.
The retention argument doesn’t hold up
Under Mississippi’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), students who aren’t reading at grade level by the end of 3rd grade are required to repeat the grade. Retention rates in the state, though, have been relatively low, and nowhere near the 10 percent that critics claim is inflating Mississippi’s 4th grade NAEP test scores. In the years immediately following the LBPA’s implementation, the retention rate was between 5.74 percent and 5.91 percentage points above the prior baseline. And it dropped sharply after that first year. By 2017-2018, the LBPA-driven retention rate was no higher than 1.58 percent with an overall retention rate under five percent.
The criticism that the state’s gains are from weaker students being removed from the 4th grade NAEP sample doesn’t align with timelines, as the state was already experiencing growth before the LBPA’s passage.
Between 1992 and 2017, Mississippi had already gained 15 of its 20 scale points in 4th grade reading. The LBPA did not apply to 3rd graders until 2015. Because NAEP’s 4th and 8th grade reading and math tests are administered every two years, the first children affected by the retention policy were 4th graders in 2017, by which point the overwhelming majority of Mississippi’s gains were already on the books. As education policy expert Rachel Canter of Mississippi First has documented, the LBPA “can only explain 4th grade gains beginning in 2017,” at most. Additionally, Canter continues, the average age of 4th graders taking the NAEP in Mississippi is no older than before the retention policy was put in place.
Even setting aside the above, students who are held back don’t vanish from the data. They eventually enter 4th grade — no Mississippi child can be retained more than once — and show up in the NAEP data sample the next test cycle. The whole point of grade retention is to give struggling students the instruction they need to be successful. If retained students score better after remediation, that is the policy working, not cheating.
What about 8th grade?
Mississippi’s 8th grade students have also improved in both reading and math over the past two decades, even as national scores remained largely flat or declined. On the 2024 NAEP, Mississippi’s 8th grade math proficiency rate was 22 percent — more than double the nine percent it was in 2000. The gap between Mississippi and the national average is now the smallest it has ever been in both reading and math at eighth grade.
In fact, the LBPA’s retention policy could not have affected 8th grade NAEP scores at all before 2020. The first cohort of 3rd graders subject to retention would not reach 8th grade until the 2019-2020 school year. Yet Mississippi’s 8th grade scores were improving throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Policy choices matter
What the critics and skeptics miss (or avoid acknowledging) is that Mississippi’s gains aren’t the product of any single policy, but of smart policy choices and a long-term commitment to higher standards and accountability for over two decades. From adopting more rigorous, nationally aligned standards and rebuilding its assessment and accountability systems to layering in a science-of-reading instructional approach, early literacy intervention, and the LBPA retention policy, the state’s broad strategy provides a repeatable model and is not a fluke. Other states that have undertaken similar standards and accountability reforms show similar patterns of improvement.
While Minnesota’s recent literacy reform efforts are a step in the right direction, the state is about a decade behind Mississippi’s policy reforms. And it shows up in the data, which is inconvenient for education bureaucrats like MDE criticizing a state that is educating its students far more effectively.
Mississippi v. Minnesota
Not only does Mississippi have a track record of meaningful achievement growth, it significantly outperforms Minnesota on a number of metrics.
In 4th grade reading, Mississippi not only outperformed Minnesota but its average score is also significantly higher than it was in 2013. Minnesota’s average score is significantly lower since then. Among Mississippi black 4th graders, they outperform Minnesota black 4th graders and have a higher average reading score than 10 years ago. The average score for Minnesota black 4th graders is significantly lower than a decade ago. This growth and decline trend holds true among Mississippi and Minnesota 4th grade Hispanic students, as well — the average reading score for Mississippi Hispanic 4th graders is higher than in 2013 whereas Minnesota Hispanic 4th graders have a lower average score than what was posted during that same time period.
Minnesota also has one of the worst 4th grade white-to-black NAEP reading gaps in the country, including being larger than Mississippi’s. Mississippi’s retention policy has been found to significantly narrow its racial achievement gaps.
NAEP Fourth-Grade Reading
Minnesota and Mississippi Comparison
Since 2003, Minnesota’s average scores in 4th grade reading, 4th grade math, 8th grade reading, and 8th grade math are lower than they were in 2003, and the gaps are even higher from 2013 scores. For Mississippi, 4th grade reading, 4th grade math, and 8th grade math have experienced significant score increases since 2003. Those increases continued from 2013.
When comparing the two states’ average 4th grade math and 8th grade reading and math scores, Minnesota’s are higher than Mississippi’s. But because different states serve different student populations, comparing states’ average NAEP scores can miss — or overstate — how well a state and its policies serve its different student populations.
That’s why the Urban Institute (not a conservative organization) has, for nearly 10 years, published demographically adjusted NAEP scores. The methodology compares each state’s performance against what would be expected given its actual student population, controlling for gender, age, race and ethnicity, poverty (free and reduced-price lunch status), special education status, and English language learner status.
The demographically adjusted results dramatically switch up not only Minnesota’s position on the leaderboard but Mississippi’s as well. Mississippi ranked #1 in the nation in 2024 across all four tested categories: 4th grade reading, 4th grade math, 8th grade reading, and 8th grade math. Mississippi’s adjusted 8th grade math score alone is seven points above #2 ranked Florida.
Minnesota, on the other hand, using the Urban Institute’s adjusted rankings, placed 39th in 4th grade reading, 26th in 4th grade math, 31st in 8th grade reading, and 15th in 8th grade math, for an overall ranking of 28th. Historically, Minnesota’s raw NAEP scores placed it in the top seven states for 4th grade math.
NAEP Reading & Math, Demographically Adjusted
Minnesota and Mississippi Comparison
Conclusion
MDE’s statements are not only troubling due to their inaccuracies, especially given they occur in an official report, but also because of what they reveal about how the agency views particular students. The state education department is discrediting gains made overwhelmingly by low-income students and students of color — the very populations Minnesota has failed to adequately serve. Mississippi students, over half of whom are children of color and many living in poverty, have reached and in some cases surpassed the national average after decades of hard work by students, teachers, and policymakers.
Dismissing and misstating what Mississippi has achieved won’t get Minnesota’s students where they need to be. And it raises real questions about whether MDE can be trusted to guide the reforms Minnesota’s students urgently need.