What is going on in Mississippi? In 2013 the state began making big investments in training its teachers in the science of reading. And the investments seems to be getting results.
Mississippi’s status as the poorest state in the nation makes many assume that also explains its students’ poor reading performance. It is indeed the poorest state, but an article in the New York Times reports that its fourth graders are now reading at the national average. Mississippi fourth grade reading scores have risen by 10 points in the last six years while all other states made no progress or got worse.
You can read the full article There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It by Emily Hanford in the New York Times, December 5, 2019 edition.