Mississippi’s ongoing early literacy success was originally dubbed a miracle.
Now we’re calling it a marathon.
That’s a more accurate description, but it still doesn’t do justice to the years and years of sustained work it’s taken to catapult the state from the back of the pack to leading on reading—and to keep those results going strong.
When a state gets policies right, as has happened in Mississippi, there’s a tendency for everyone to have a hot take about why things happened the way they did—sometimes to take credit, sometimes to suggest how others can quickly and easily replicate the outcome.
Here’s the thing: We can learn many things from Mississippi, but there are no quick, easy answers in this line of work. Successful policy and implementation in a particular state can take years. Based on my nearly 30 years of experience in education policy, there are three interconnected elements necessary to achieve sustainable outcomes in education reform: policy, programs, and political perseverance.
All of them have to align for a state to be primed for success.
Lasting education reform requires strong policy, consistent implementation, and political will
When it comes to improving outcomes for students, policy is the foundation. Strong policy creates the conditions for success, and details matter, especially when it comes to holding the system—and schools—accountable. For example, high-quality math and reading instruction are critical, but if a state has no way to effectively measure progress, leaders won’t be able to determine whether it’s actually helping students learn. Too often states compromise on critical points, and it’s not surprising when weak policy doesn’t create change.
When we talk about programs, we are talking about the implementation of policy each day after it’s enacted. Strong policy will not make an impact if it’s not implemented well and with fidelity. Deployment of funding and supports, thoughtful regulations, and a state agency that’s laser-focused on building the infrastructure and processes for success are essential.
If, for example, state funding dries up, or the state education department doesn’t keep an eye on how teacher training efforts are going, all the policy that’s fit to print is only as useful as the paper it’s printed on.
Finally, there’s the issue of political perseverance, the will to not blink when the road is tough. For any change to take place over the long haul, states must be willing to put in the time and relentlessly implement the policy. This is routine work that sometimes creates small “p” political headaches for elected and appointed officials that make it harder to stay the course.
It’s one thing for a state to put a strong accountability system in place that measures how students are doing using objective state standards aligned to national standards. It’s quite another when those systems yield an uncomfortable reality: students don’t know as much as they need to know, and they’re not keeping up with their counterparts nationally and internationally.
No elected official has ever wanted to say to the public, “We’re falling behind.” And so the temptation to lower the academic bar or give schools and students just a little more time becomes very, very real. Few are those in positions of power who’ve had the fortitude to weather that discomfort in the name of student achievement.
Yet alignment of these three prongs—policy, programs, and political perseverance—is why Mississippi has been so successful for so many years.
Running the Mississippi Marathon: Eat your broccoli
Now that we’ve laid out the three prongs of success for any state to succeed, let’s go back to Mississippi and see how things played out there to get the state to “marathon” status.
Mississippi’s ascent to improved academic outcomes began with two foundational policies: A–F school accountability, which was adopted in 2012, and comprehensive early literacy, which was put in place via the 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
By law, Mississippi adopted an accountability system that used a strong summative school grading system, where schools earned an A, B, C, D, or F rating that parents, policymakers, and the public could automatically understand.
In addition, the state began measuring what matters—and how they measured it was equally important. Leaders focused on student proficiency, student progress, and growth of the lowest-performing students in each school. They didn’t add unnecessary or subjective indicators that detracted from reading and math outcomes. They didn’t use indexes where schools got credit for kids who are below grade level and higher-performing kids generate points that offset the need to help students below grade level. They didn’t use normative growth models where there are always winners and losers and where schools could earn points when student learning declined as long as it was less decline compared to others.
Instead, they set an aspirational, yet attainable, grading scale. These are the details that matter. Other states have adopted A-F school grading systems and don’t get the same outcomes because they ignore these fine points.
Mississippi also put in place a comprehensive literacy-based promotion act. They conducted screenings of students in grades K-3 at the beginning, middle, and end of each school year so they could identify struggling students early and personalize intervention.
They also began training teachers in the science of reading, which is based on phonics and comprehension. They put reading coaches in place to support teachers in improving their reading instruction, and they ensured colleges of education were up to the task. Mississippi implemented a teacher licensure exam based on the science of reading that forced education preparation programs to fix flawed instruction when their graduates couldn’t pass that test.
Finally, the state put in place a policy of last resort: a third grade promotion gate that ensured students who were not ready were not moved to fourth grade unprepared but instead received an extra year of learning. Many other states have adopted strong reading policy, but they fail to enact a backstop. Some omit the promotion gate altogether, while others put a promotion gate in place with exemptions galore that render it useless or enact a future promotion gate that gets repealed before it ever gets used.
These accountability and reading policy solutions—brought to life all together, not piecemeal—are the reason why Mississippi has seen enormous growth in its reading outcomes over the past decade.
With strong policy in place, Mississippi’s program implementation also has been a process to behold.
On school accountability, the state created a Technical Advisory Committee that included in-state stakeholders within the system as well as objective, national experts who don’t have an inherent conflict to desire a weakening of the system to make their schools look better.
The Technical Advisory Committee has helped guide the state on critical decisions like cut scores—the passing scores set on the state test—and maintain a strong accountability calculation even when political forces inside the state were pushing for weaker tests or subjective measures.
The state education chief also was strongly committed to implementation, holding regular meetings across multiple divisions within the department to ensure everyone was working together and focused on the goals of improving reading and math outcomes for kids. This allowed federal and state funds to be strategically deployed in ways that supported districts and accomplished those goals.
Finally, we have to focus on political perseverance—arguably the hardest of the “Three Ps” to guarantee because it so often depends on leaders who must win elections or who are term-limited. There’s no question Mississippi has stayed the course and continued to achieve outcomes based on a shared commitment and the best interest of students.
Other states have shown how easily reforms can lose force when political will falters.
Accountability systems can be weakened by lowered expectations, overly complicated rating structures, or too many indicators that distract from reading and math outcomes. Early literacy policies can lose power when promotion gates are omitted, overloaded with exemptions, or delayed until they are repealed before ever taking effect.
These choices are not irreversible. They are reminders that states can change course, restore clarity and recommit to strong accountability systems that tell the truth about student performance and keep the focus where it belongs: improving outcomes for kids.
Conclusion: Do what works and never back down
If there’s one thing the last 25 years in education policy have taught us, it’s that success is fragile. State leaders can get 90 percent of a plan right, but if they overlook a few critical details or flinch under political pressure, the entire system can undermine itself.
We keep showing up because we know that policy is progress, and it’s not stagnant. It doesn’t end when a governor signs a bill. That’s why our work continues long after the ink has dried. The hardest, most essential work happens in the quiet offices of state agencies, in principal meetings, and in classrooms where teachers turn big ideas into daily reality.
There’s no single policy that will turn around falling student outcomes or struggling schools. But there are many proven, comprehensive actions that states can take to move in the right direction: strong assessments, transparent and rigorous accountability, raising the bar over time, comprehensive reading policy grounded in the science of reading, financial incentives for improvement, and focused intervention, to name just a few.
When a state has strong policy in place, when that policy is supported with resources and programs implemented with fidelity and focus, and when political leaders commit the time to launch and sustain the policies, states will see strong outcomes.
Policy matters. Implementation matters. Consistency matters. Raising the bar over time matters. Great teachers matter. And the policymakers who stick their necks out to make bold changes for kids are central to it all. Success is never final, reform is never finished, and we’re going to stay the course and keep pushing for improvement because our students and families deserve better.
Editor’s note: This was first published by ExcelinEd.
