Better results are starting to show up in Grade 8, too

The year 2019 was a pivotal point in the seemingly unending war about how to teach reading. That’s when, using methods recommended in the National Reading Panel Report from the year 2000, Mississippi first showed some dramatic results for Grade 4 reading in the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress. In fact, Mississippi was the only state to show improvement from the 2017 NAEP in Grade 4 reading.

Along the way, as I wrote on November 2, 2019 in Kentucky education can’t say thank goodness for Mississippi anymore!, both white and Black students in the Magnolia State had moved ahead of their racial counterparts in Kentucky, too.

It was pretty eye-catching.

It was also pretty upsetting to the status quo crowd in the education community, including more than a few Ed school professors. The Mississippi situation presented some real challenges to their cherished beliefs about how reading is best taught. It also threatened their excuses that generally disappointing reading results were due to factors outside of school, such as poverty. Such excuses were offered to explain why the Ed school crowd’s cherished education methods were not resulting in large percentages of students learning to read well.

For example, in my follow-on blog about Mississippi’s 2019 NAEP results, since many missed it — Kentucky education can’t say thank goodness for Mississippi anymore!, I took time to compare teacher salaries in Kentucky to those in Mississippi. Oh, my – Mississippi had moved ahead of Kentucky even though they were spending nearly $9,000 less per year in average teacher salaries! The “It’s the poverty” crowd certainly couldn’t have information like that seeming credible.

Thus, the pushback against Mississippi’s accomplishments began.

At first, naysayers claimed it was all just due to Mississippi’s high rate of Grade 3 retentions, which resulted in an overall older group of students taking the Grade 4 NAEP. This hypothesis even showed up in an article issued on December 4, 2019 from the Fordham Institute, Mississippi rising? A partial explanation for its NAEP improvement is that it holds students back.

But that argument didn’t hold up. I took a look over time at the numbers of third grade students in Mississippi that were promoted to the fourth grade the following year. If retentions in third grade were growing, the difference between third grade enrollment in year one should start to increase above the following year’s fourth grade enrollment. But that wasn’t happening, as I pointed out in Some more food for thought on the Mississippi NAEP situation. In fact, it looked like Mississippi’s teachers were doing a better job of getting students prepared for the fourth grade in 2019 than they were back in 2013 before the Mississippi reforms had any chance to have impact. That is exactly what we want to happen.

Equally interesting, by August 5, 2022, a retraction of sorts had appeared in that Fordham Institute paper about retention in Mississippi. It says in part:

“Analysis of NAEP demographic data shows that retaining students was in fact not a major contributor to Mississippi’s improved fourth grade NAEP results in the last few years—at least not the way this article suggested.”

What! You mean retention didn’t explain away Mississippi’s Grade 4 progress! Could it be that holding kids back and then giving them real help with programs based on the best research about teaching reading actually works!

Naysayers were, and still are, quick to point to all this research that shows retention is bad (and maybe it is if you only give kids more ineffective instruction after you hold them back). But could it be the research cited by naysayers didn’t consider the quality of education those held back were receiving?

In any event, the Ed school types were not happy about the implications from noteworthy progress in Mississippi.

So, attacks on Mississippi and the methods it had adopted started to grow.

Along the way, naysayers were soon pointing out that while Mississippi’s fourth graders had made improvements on NAEP, the state’s eighth graders were still doing poorly (Never mind that there hadn’t been time for the elementary school reading efforts to work their way up to middle school grades). Naysayers latched onto this latest criticism with a vengeance that continues to this day.

And, that brings me to the data discussion for this blog (my regular readers KNEW that was coming).

What has happened with Mississippi’s Grade 8 NAEP performance? Is it still in the doldrums? Is Mississippi unable to capitalize on the great progress it made in Grade 4 reading.

Well, Table 1 shows the story for white student scores across all 50 states. The left-hand side shows how Mississippi was ranked by tools in the NAEP Data Explorer for white students’ scores.

 Table 1

If you look at the left side of the table you will see that, as of 2013, even Kentucky’s white Grade 8 students could still say thank goodness for Mississippi. The dark blue shading for the Cross-Jurisdiction Significant Difference shows Kentucky’s 6-point higher score was statistically significantly higher than Mississippi’s 266 NAEP Scale Score. White students in a total of 43 states statistically significantly outscored Mississippi’s white students on NAEP Grade 8 Reading in 2013.

Now, hold on to your seat and look at what happened in the 2022 NAEP Grade 8 Reading assessment. Whites in only 5 states in the entire nation scored statistically significantly higher than Mississippi.

What’s more, the Bluegrass State now scores statistically significantly LOWER than Mississippi for white student scores, as well.

Now, let’s see how the Black students did. Table 2 has that comparison.

Table 2

First, note that not all states had scores reported for Black students. The ones without scores are listed at the bottom of the table.

In 2013, among the states that did have NAEP Grade 8 Reading scores reported, Mississippi’s Blacks placed just one slot off the bottom. Furthermore, 27 other states outscored the Magnolia State by a statistically significant amount for Black student scores.

Flash forward to 2022, and Mississippi has moved up notably, again. Now, Black students in only one other state in the nation statistically significantly outscore Mississippi’s Black students on NAEP Grade 8 Reading.

Oh, and Kentucky did another flip-flop with Mississippi between 2013 and 2022 for Black students’ scores.

Is there still more work for Mississippi to do? YOU BET. The White minus Black achievement gap continues and neither student group is posting the kinds of proficiency rates we’d like to see. It’s not a miracle – at least at present.

Never the less, Mississippi’s progress, compared to other states, now showing in both the fourth and eighth grades, seems noteworthy. Continuing to dispute this rather than trying to figure out exactly why MS is doing better, seems ill advised, at best.