Expecting impacts of Mississippi’s reform to already show in ACT scores is inappropriate. There hasn’t been enough time for a K to 3 set of reforms to work up into high school. Mississippi didn’t start getting national notice for NAEP Grade 4 Reading improvement until 2019, and that’s not surprising. While the frequently cited legislation passed in 2013 (though there were earlier efforts — more on that later), it took 2 years just for Carey Wright to set up the major programs at the MS DOE. It took more time to get a notable number of teachers retrained and proficient in the new approaches. So, 2019 seems reasonable as the point where things started to really produce. The 4th graders of 2019 didn’t reach 8th grade until 2023, but the NAEP got cancelled that year due to COVID. So, the first time improvements seen in Grade 4 were likely to show in Grade 8 NAEP Reading was 2024. And, guess what — if you break NAEP results down and compare separately for white students and Black students in each state, Mississippi’s 8th graders moved up very notably in 2024. Because NAEP is a sampled assessment, a good way to consider performances is looking at statistically significant results. Back in 2013, when the reform act passed, Mississippi’s white 8th graders were statistically significantly outscored by whites in 43 other states on NAEP Reading. Flash forward to 2024 and only white students in just 7 states could make the same claim. For Black students, the changes in NAEP Grade 8 Reading were equally notable. In 2013, Black students in 27 of the 42 states that got NAEP Grade 8 Reading scores outscored those in Mississippi by a statistically significant amount. By 2024, only those Black students in Colorado and Massachusetts could make the same claim. One other point, between 2013 and 2024 the white minus Black achievement gap on Grade 8 NAEP was decreased by 6 NAEP Scale Score points, and the NAEP Data Explorer indicates that change was statistically significant, too. So, impacts are just now showing for Mississippi in Grade 8 NAEP Reading. We shouldn’t expect to see impacts on 11th grade ACT testing for another year, at best. One more point: Mississippi’s reforms didn’t start in 2013. The state was doing things to improve way back around the time the Year 2000 report from the national reading panel came out. You and your readers would really benefit from Rachel Canter’s new report, “Inside the Mississippi Marathon,” online here: progressivepolicy.org/wp-con…. It turns out things like a $100 million project from the Barksdale Reading Institute started bringing outcomes from the national reading panel to Mississippi’s classrooms well before 2013. This helps explain some of the state’s improvement in Grade 4 NAEP Reading prior to that year. The Barksdale effort was a start, but it wasn’t enough, so after 2013 the state’s rate of improvement on Grade 4 NAEP Reading, which had started to stagnate, started to rise again, and at an increased rate from that in the earlier years. Was this a miracle? No. Is it quite impressive — absolutely. As far as the ACT goes, just be a little more patient.

1/ I become more and more dismayed by the huge number of supposed education experts who regularly use data from the NAEP improperly. In this thread I plan to outline some of the issues so the rest of us will have a better understanding of how people mislead with NAEP.

I am surprised. Too many educators seem to expect Mississippi’s (MS) reading reforms to somehow already be impacting the state's Grade 11 ACT scores. They just don't recognize that a reform aimed at lower grades K to 3 needs extra time to show improvement in higher grades. There simply hasn't been enough time for that to happen. Though MS' reading improvement act was passed in 2013, it took the MS DOE several more years just to set up programs to impact things like Professional Development. And, you cannot retrain an entire corps of a state's teachers in new methods and get them proficient with those methods in just a year or two, either. So, it's no surprise that impacts of MS' reform really wern't recognized until after the 2019 Grade 4 NAEP Reading scores released. This was just starting to impact Grade 4 at that time. Those impacts might have shown in a 2023 Grade 8 NAEP, but the federal test was not given that year due lingering COVID impacts. The next NAEP in reading was given in 2024, and despite claims from some, compared to other states MS started to show notable improvements in Grade 8 NAEP Reading in 2024, as the tables below, generated with the NAEP Data Explorer, show. For white students, the tables show that in 2013, MS' 8th graders were statistically significantly outperformed by white students in 43 other states. In 2024, only white students in 7 states could make the same claim. For Black students, MS' were statistically significantly outscored by those in 27 other states in 2013. By 2024, only Black students in Colorado and Massachusetts could make the same claim. Now we get to the ACT. MS does statewide ACT testing in Grade 11. Even the 8th graders from 2023 didn’t enter that ACT test pool until 2026. We haven't even seen those ACT results and won’t for many months. Eighth graders who started to move up in NAEP in 2024 won't see the ACT until 2027. Also keep in mind, MS continued to improve in Grade 4 NAEP Reading after 2019. It will be even longer before those students hit Grade 11. So, let’s see what happens in a couple of more years with the ACT and stop trying to kill something before it even has a reasonable chance to prove itself, @DianeRavitch @plthomasEdD

I am surprised. Too many educators seem to expect Mississippi’s (MS) reading reforms to somehow already be impacting the state's Grade 11 ACT scores. They just don't recognize that a reform aimed at lower grades K to 3 needs extra time to show improvement in higher grades. There simply hasn't been enough time for that to happen. Though MS' reading improvement act was passed in 2013, it took the MS DOE several more years just to set up programs to impact things like Professional Development. And, you cannot retrain an entire corps of a state's teachers in new methods and get them proficient with those methods in just a year or two, either. So, it's no surprise that impacts of MS' reform really wern't recognized until after the 2019 Grade 4 NAEP Reading scores released. This was just starting to impact Grade 4 at that time. Those impacts might have shown in a 2023 Grade 8 NAEP, but the federal test was not given that year due lingering COVID impacts. The next NAEP in reading was given in 2024, and despite claims from some, compared to other states MS started to show notable improvements in Grade 8 NAEP Reading in 2024, as the tables below, generated with the NAEP Data Explorer, show. For white students, the tables show that in 2013, MS' 8th graders were statistically significantly outperformed by white students in 43 other states. In 2024, only white students in 7 states could make the same claim. For Black students, MS' were statistically significantly outscored by those in 27 other states in 2013. By 2024, only Black students in Colorado and Massachusetts could make the same claim. Now we get to the ACT. MS does statewide ACT testing in Grade 11. Even the 8th graders from 2023 didn’t enter that ACT test pool until 2026. We haven't even seen those ACT results and won’t for many months. Eighth graders who started to move up in NAEP in 2024 won't see the ACT until 2027. Also keep in mind, MS continued to improve in Grade 4 NAEP Reading after 2019. It will be even longer before those students hit Grade 11. So, let’s see what happens in a couple of more years with the ACT and stop trying to kill something before it even has a reasonable chance to prove itself, @DianeRavitch @plthomasEdD

What an embarrassment Only two percent, TWO PERCENT of teachers say they learned about effective literacy instruction (i.e. phonics) in their teacher prep program

Too many students graduate from high school without the reading skills they need. Here's what we know from the NAEP data:

Neuroscientist explains how the SAT is redefining education

Why would a teacher rather believe a child can’t read than believe a school proved every child can? I posted Steubenville’s results — lowest 5th grade reader reading at 5th grade level. 9 of 10 said I was lying. 1 of 10 asked how to do it. The data isn’t the problem. The belief system is. @ehanford @reading_league