Anyone got any additional info on this?
- Thread starter paindonthurtDCD2
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What if it comes out we miss counted? Our reading is on par with other states, but our arithmetic skills are lacking? That’s where my confidence level is right now.
Also, Wisconsin?
Also, Wisconsin?
Amazing part is the doing more with less.
wonder how much waste there is in Wisconsin?
Mississippi kids went to school during Covid?
That’s some of it. Mississippi went back to school much quicker than many states did.
My understanding is that this place has been instrumental...
www.msreads.org
Barksdale Reading Institute
www.msreads.org
Lots has been written about the Mississippi miracle.
This is the best article, despite the clickbait headline: https://www.educationdaly.us/p/mississippi-cant-possibly-have-good
In summary, the Literacy act of 2013 + coming back quicker after COVID + other states dropping significantly and ignoring Mississippi's approach because its Mississippi.
We have shot from 51st to 29th in overall education ranking in 12 years.
This is the best article, despite the clickbait headline: https://www.educationdaly.us/p/mississippi-cant-possibly-have-good
In summary, the Literacy act of 2013 + coming back quicker after COVID + other states dropping significantly and ignoring Mississippi's approach because its Mississippi.
We have shot from 51st to 29th in overall education ranking in 12 years.
My understanding is that this place has been instrumental...
Barksdale Reading Institute
A
I have a couple of family members who are teachers. They claim that their curriculum is no longer about educating the students, it’s solely about the standardized test scores. Higher scores mean more funding so thats all they teach. Who knows what’s true. All I know is that from someone who hired high school graduates for manufacturing jobs, the last ten years of graduating seniors are generally not capable of any comprehension above the most simple of tasks.
I went down the rabbit hole...
Looks like these ratings are "demographically adjusted" per the original article.
www.educationdaly.us
I'm not sure how they calculate the "adjustment." This PDF is supposedly the explainer, but it's nothing but a word salad designed to run you in circles without giving a clear explanation.
My mom is a retired HS school teacher from the MS Delta. She believes the parts of the "success" are found in the grading methodology and not the actual test results.
I'm not insinuating strides haven't been made within our education system, but I do think it's fair to add some context to the information that is out there.
Looks like these ratings are "demographically adjusted" per the original article.
Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools
And yet it does. Are we ready to deal?
www.educationdaly.us
I'm not sure how they calculate the "adjustment." This PDF is supposedly the explainer, but it's nothing but a word salad designed to run you in circles without giving a clear explanation.
My mom is a retired HS school teacher from the MS Delta. She believes the parts of the "success" are found in the grading methodology and not the actual test results.
I'm not insinuating strides haven't been made within our education system, but I do think it's fair to add some context to the information that is out there.
Fourth graders in 2025 tested higher in Mississippi because they returned to school earlier back in 2020?
I mean, maybe? They were like five years old at that time.
If this higher scoring is really due to those kids returning to school sooner back in 2020, then that may also support the idea that earlier education is crucial to development. Universal preschool time.
But can they throw and catch, tackle and block, defend and shoot, hit and field? Because for years and years so many kids have been told their way of of poverty is the NFL, NBA, Or MLB!
when learning a solid and rewarding trade skill or how to do simple math, read at a high level and write legibly is far more important to future success in the world we live in!
If this statistic is accurate and real(not saying it isn't, just recognizing that education rankings constantly misrepresent...my state included), then it is really damn neat to see MS jump that high.
It'll be interesting to see how this impacts others measured statistics of state success in the coming years.
Like how many stay in MS to work, how many attain college degrees, how many attain graduate or higher degrees, how much state median household income increases, etc etc.
There are so many variables that I wonder how much impact primary education may have.
That's incredible. Now if we could somehow fix the blight that is Jackson.
Maybe we’re not getting smarter, maybe the rest of the country is just getting stupider!
What would be crazy is to see what would happen if we FULLY FUNDED our education system.
It's because they held back 3rd graders who had struggles with the testing etc. Basically, they got an extra year to prepare/learn. It's how schools SHOULD work. It's how schools USED to work. If kids can't pass, TEACH them. Schools don't allow kids to "fail" a grade anymore.
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Yes I think we now get a nice handicap for having so many kids from poor rural areas testing. Not saying g that’s it but that’s a pretty significant shift.I went down the rabbit hole...
Looks like these ratings are "demographically adjusted" per the original article.
Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools
And yet it does. Are we ready to deal?
I'm not sure how they calculate the "adjustment." This PDF is supposedly the explainer, but it's nothing but a word salad designed to run you in circles without giving a clear explanation.
My mom is a retired HS school teacher from the MS Delta. She believes the parts of the "success" are found in the grading methodology and not the actual test results.
I'm not insinuating strides haven't been made within our education system, but I do think it's fair to add some context to the information that is out there.
It's dense, but I think it explains it ok without going into the actual numbers? Basically, they take seven variables into account: (1) Race (2) Age at the time of the test (3) whether English is the first language (4) whether the student has a disability (5) How much a language other than english is spoken at home (6) Whether they are eligible for reduced or free lunch and (7) whether they are eligible for free lunch in schools that use a special provision to provide school lunch (this is the only one that seems not straightforward to me).I went down the rabbit hole...
Looks like these ratings are "demographically adjusted" per the original article.
Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools
And yet it does. Are we ready to deal?
I'm not sure how they calculate the "adjustment." This PDF is supposedly the explainer, but it's nothing but a word salad designed to run you in circles without giving a clear explanation.
THey look at data over however long they've had the data (a lot of it back to 1996 or 1998) and use that to predict how students will perform based on those variables, and then judge based on how they do compared to the expected result.
Doing some sort of adjustment is hugely important if you actually want to measure how well the school is teaching rather than just measure the composition of the student body. The reason you see Wisconsin used so much is that they are historically the poster child for claiming good education when their performance is really about student mix. If you just did the rudimentary adjustment of comparing their performance of white students, hispanic students, and black students, they would fair poorly to middle of the pack. If you do no adjustments, they would look like they were doing great. Can't remember which campaign it was, but there was a federal election in the 2000's where a democratic candidate made a comment roughly to the effect of "republicans give you education results like Texas and Democrats give you results like Wisconsin," but at the time white students in Texas out performed white students in Wisconsin, hispanic students in texas outperformed hispanic students in Wisconsin, and black students in Texas outperformed black students in Wisconsin.
There is certainly teaching to the test, but it's mostly about teaching phonetics and making sure students can read at a sufficient level before passing third grade. The methods proven most effective in elementary school are boring and tedious. Teachers understandably hate them and were eager to move away from them when BS research came out claiming the whole language approach could be effective.
Being rural has nothing to do with it. It's basically just race and economic factors, and then whether they are in an english as a second language home. And I would say we don't get a handicap as much as we get to compare like to like.
If you want to know whether kids from an affluent lily white suburb school are going to outperform students from a poor school that is primarily black, you don't have to do the tests at this point. We know and can mostly predict the gap outside of some outliers.
If you want to see who is doing a good job educating the students they have rather than get a proxy for the makeup of the student body, you have to have some controls.
Plenty of evidence of that.
They want kids in 5K to be reading and writing by the middle of the school year. My girls were in 1st grade when Covid shut down school and they were reading and writing small paragraphs in class and for homework.
Covid isn’t the sole reason but I think it was a factor. Devil is in the details and I’ve not read the whole thing but is it more that Mississippi is doing better or that other states are doing worse and Mississippi kinda treaded water.
That’s a lot of it. The teachers teach to make sure their students do good on the state tests because it reflects on the school. The whole thing is bullshít.
It certainly supports the idea that throwing money at the issues and shutting down schools bc our “feels” is idiotic.
Just so we are clear. I know you don’t wanna jump on that grenade for your side.
Actually many of them have been lied to more about college than nba, nfl and mlb.
And here it is!! Someone trying to waste more money even though it’s not working in other places!!
Some administrators would build even bigger houses and nothing would improve. That's my guess.
My understanding is it is more that Colleges of Education basically destroyed our education system by propagating idiotic teaching methods that don't work and Mississippi is one of the first states to go back to things that work, like teaching phonetics and holding students back until they can read rather than passing them on to grades where not being able to read puts them at a huge disadvantage in every subject. So we really are improving, but it's improving back to basically where we all used to be. Take that with a shaker of salt, but that's the gist as I understand it.
In Mississippi, third-grade retention, also known as the "third-grade gate," refers to a policy where students who fail a reading test in third grade may be held back and required to repeat the year. This policy has been implemented to improve reading skills and raise achievement in Mississippi
My gut and limited MSU education tell me this is the answer.
Focusing on reading at this stage is so important. If you can't read well early it's really really hard to teach yourself anything that matters as you get older.
Whatever the story, I don't think this performance is BS and see it as a very positive thing for the state.
But they meet the metric. Set a metric, a standard, and have it met. That's how most things work.
What studies show universal preschool works well? I agree that some kids would be better off spending most of the day with trained professionals rather than undereducated parents, or an undereducated parent, but the studies I've seen aren't scalable. I also suspect academic achievement gaps among groups will likely remain although there may be some narrowing. Parents and amount of time studying seem to be most important. That explains Asian academic success unless one thinks Asians are just genetically better suited for academic success. I'm not suggesting there are no legacy effects from Jim Crow and white supremacy. Kudos to MS. I think it is possible, using the right methods and having appropriate expectations, to improve academic achievement (think of all those years lost to the whole language theoretical nonsense).
Yeah, Shad White needs to be allowed to do his job and those things would cease.
I am hesitant to believe that 4th grade reading numbers are significantly improved due to those kids going back to school earlier than some kids from some other states 5 years ago when those kids were 5 and 6 years old.
- Lots of other states started in-person school back up when Mississippi started. Are 4th grade reading scores from those states also all improved?
- Have 4th grade reading scores from states that went back to in-person school later than Mississippi all dropped(or most all, even) in a statistically meaningful way?
Arguing that an early return from covid 5 years ago is a factor for the improved testing results seems like some are trying to force a narrative into the discussion. I genuinely doubt a few people even realized how young 4th graders were back in 2020 before it was pointed out.
And again- if a 1-8 months of in-person learning at that young of an age is the reason for such a significant jump in reading scores in 4th grade, then its logical to view universal preschool as a huge potential benefit since that would get so many kids into the classroom at a younger age.
I am not jumping on any grenade here for 'my side'(what side is that?). Almost all school districts in my state were in-person at the start of school in the Fall of '20, and the handful that werent in-person right away were in-person within a few weeks. I am well aware of the perceived benefits and perceived downsides of returning to in-person teaching then.
I am also well aware of the academic analysis of how states and various school districts handled returning to in-person learning, that has taken place in subsequent years.
You seem to have combined 2 grievances though. You complain about money being thown at the issues and you also complain about schools shutting down. Those are fundamentally different and should not be discussed together.
Wasting money on possibly bettering an education of youth? Sounds like maybe you prefer academies?
Oh goodness.
Let me add a couple of things for consideration, as I have been very close to this resurgence in Mississippi.
Implementing the science of reading has been the biggest factor in this jump. Before 2013, do you know how Mississippi teachers were told to teach people to read? Sight words.
You don't know the word dog? Look at the picture. That's a dog, so this word is dog.
It works for 3 year olds just learning how to sound out letters. It does not work for 3rd graders and it certainly doesn't work for 10th graders. You would be shocked to hear how many students were graduating between 2003 (No Child Left Behind) and 2016 that could not read. Nationwide, but in Mississippi especially.
The phonics based system that was implemented in MS + the 3rd grade reading gate is making sure of one thing. We have students that can actually read. And students that can read can read and understand math problems. They can read and understand science and history. The first set of third graders to go through this graduated in 2022. This class is the third set. Its only going to get better. We are 29th now (see rankings below). I think we see top 25 by 2027 and maybe top 20 by 2030. Alabama just implemented the Mississippi plan and we are a year behind Florida and five years behind Tennessee.
Ignore the actual ranking and focus on the increase. Part of our ranking jump is that other states are focused on the wrong things and their test scores are going down. If Oregon, Minnesota, California and New York decide that they want to focus on education and not unimportant things, then our ranking will go back down but our scores will be higher, and that's good for the state.
Let me add a couple of things for consideration, as I have been very close to this resurgence in Mississippi.
Implementing the science of reading has been the biggest factor in this jump. Before 2013, do you know how Mississippi teachers were told to teach people to read? Sight words.
You don't know the word dog? Look at the picture. That's a dog, so this word is dog.
It works for 3 year olds just learning how to sound out letters. It does not work for 3rd graders and it certainly doesn't work for 10th graders. You would be shocked to hear how many students were graduating between 2003 (No Child Left Behind) and 2016 that could not read. Nationwide, but in Mississippi especially.
The phonics based system that was implemented in MS + the 3rd grade reading gate is making sure of one thing. We have students that can actually read. And students that can read can read and understand math problems. They can read and understand science and history. The first set of third graders to go through this graduated in 2022. This class is the third set. Its only going to get better. We are 29th now (see rankings below). I think we see top 25 by 2027 and maybe top 20 by 2030. Alabama just implemented the Mississippi plan and we are a year behind Florida and five years behind Tennessee.
Ignore the actual ranking and focus on the increase. Part of our ranking jump is that other states are focused on the wrong things and their test scores are going down. If Oregon, Minnesota, California and New York decide that they want to focus on education and not unimportant things, then our ranking will go back down but our scores will be higher, and that's good for the state.
I contend that the biggest problem facing this state is in the 25 year horizon. We have bettered education for a generation but have no opportunities.
See, I agree with this. I've got a kid that's finishing up PA school next week, and she's probably headed OOS (prefers to stay here) because she can't find a job in MS that isn't an ER type job.
This is key.
Being ranked high is great for headlines, but having year over year sustained scores that are flat or increased is what’s really important.