In Response to Mississippi Reading Discussions

I’ve had a few meaningful conversations regarding my Mississippi reading article, and I’d like to respond so everyone can read and get involved with comments, if you like.

Sally asked, “do you really want to retain that many kids?  What kind of numbers are we talking about?”

In the 2021-22 school year, 85% of Mississippi 3rd graders passed the 3rd-grade reading assessment after the final retest.  It appears that of the approximately 15% that failed the test, only 9% were retained because 6% get some form of “good-cause exemption”.  If we can make it to that level (9%) – that will be awesome!  Those 9% of students, per the studies I cited in the original article, are statistically going to be better off than their peers that barely passed the test.  This will basically mean that we will have approximately 9 or 10% more kids in third grade each year.

Kathy said, “I taught for 30 years in early grades, and if you ask anyone with that type of experience, they’ll tell you that we can recognize the kids that are in trouble much earlier, usually by the end of first grade.  Why wait till third grade?”

My response is twofold:

First, the system designers in Mississippi took a very analytical approach to the problem and certainly recognized this issue, so I’m going to guess a little here at their conclusions. Since kids progress at vastly different rates at that age, if you make the gate too early you will retain kids that simply haven’t matured academically enough yet to handle the material, but may catch up on their own.  Remember part of this plan is to deluge the underperforming kids with additional help all along the way – from pre-k through third grade, recognizing deficiencies and helping where necessary.  Just because the test is in third grade does not mean we wait till third grade to help.

Additionally, if you retain kids after first grade, for example, you will probably need to retain again after third or fourth grade.  The designers of the system probably felt that one hard “gate” would be better in terms of accountability and cost.

John asked, “what portion of the success is due to a change in Mississippi to a phonics based curriculum, and don’t we already teach phonics in DPS?”

I don’t know the answer definitively to either of those questions. Although I know phonics is a part of our Decatur curriculum, I don’t know if that curriculum is mandated and implemented by building or for the whole district. If something like the Mississippi plan works, it should be implemented across the entire district - without exception. From most of the articles I’ve read, phonics appears to be a driving factor that most state legislatures are mandating. This should clearly be a part of our solution.

However, and I mentioned this in my original article, my opinion is that the “gate” and the accountability it provides is the most important factor in the plans success. Any attempt to duplicate Mississippi’s success without a gate will be perceived as just another of the many curriculum changes every district goes through multiple times a decade. Ho-hum.

And Duane said, “what does this sentence mean, and why didn’t you let me edit your article before you posted?”  I searched for other studies regarding retention and came across a 2014 Texas student study that tracked already students and found…

Oops.  Cut and paste error.  The sentence should read…

I searched for other studies regarding retention and came across a 2014 Texas student study that tracked 38,000 students and found…

That’s the last time I post without sending the article through the usual editorial process!