When Mississippi reformed its reading curriculum in 2013, student achievement in the state’s elementary schools soared. Inspired by the “Mississippi Miracle,” other Southern states followed suit. But the miracle hit a wall: college.
Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama have seen notable improvements in fourth-grade reading over the past decade, but much smaller gains in eighth grade. (Graphics at the bottom of this story.)
Mississippi has led the way in retraining reading science teachers – which emphasizes phonics and other basic literacy skills – and sending coaches into schools. The state’s fourth graders went from being at the bottom nationally to surpassing the national average in 2024. Many have called this the “Mississippi Miracle.”
“Mississippi moved a mountain in fourth grade,” said Dan McGrath, a retired federal education official who oversaw the NAEP assessments. Both high- and low-achieving students made progress. But when these fourth graders reached eighth grade, their progress stalled. By 2019, more eighth graders had lower scores than in 2013. Scores fell further during the pandemic, and by 2024, only the highest-performing eighth graders have recovered somewhat.
“When should we see the Mississippi miracle reach eighth grade? Why haven’t we seen it yet?” » asked McGrath.
Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee started their reforms later and may need more time. But McGrath’s question remains.
Related: Reading comprehension loses in the classroom
Researchers and literacy advocates point to a common answer: Early reading reforms focused on phonics, which helped students decode words, but decoding alone is not enough for good reading in middle school, where words are longer and sentences more complicated.
Timothy Shanahan, a veteran reading researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said reading instruction should continue after students have learned to read. “It’s not exactly phonics,” he said. Teachers must break down multisyllabic words, teach word roots and odd spellings, and find time to read extensively to master complex texts.
Shanahan thinks schools should teach students to read grade-level texts, even if they are difficult, and provide guidance on vocabulary, syntax and sentence structure.
Research findings are sometimes unclear on exactly how to help older students with reading comprehension. It is widely accepted that background knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension strategies are all important. But experts and advocates disagree about their relative importance and how much time should be spent on them.
Many literacy advocates argue for more emphasis on basic knowledge because it is difficult to grasp an unfamiliar subject. For example, even if I had a glossary of words, a technical medical article involving genetic analysis would be lost on me. Researchers also say that many low-income children are not exposed to as much art, travel and political news at home as wealthier children, meaning that many topics covered in books are less familiar and harder to absorb.
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Some research has shown promising improvements in literacy through children’s knowledge development. Harvard researchers have had some success with specially designed social studies and science courses (not reading courses). But one Meta-analysis 2024 did not find short-term reading benefits in classroom knowledge-building units. These lessons may take years to improve reading comprehension. And this long path of progress is difficult for researchers to follow.
“There is no doubt that knowledge plays a role in understanding,” Shanahan said. “But it has been difficult to figure out how such knowledge could become widespread. In other words, if you teach children about goldfish, it may improve their understanding of other texts about goldfish, but will it have any other impact?”
There is also debate about the value of training students in reading comprehension questions, those that are likely to come up on standardized tests, such as determining an author’s main point.
Carl Hendrick, a prominent proponent of explicitly teaching children basic knowledge and vocabulary and professor at Academic University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, agrees that a little strategic teaching can be helpful, such as asking students to practice writing a summary after reading something. But Hendrick concludes from the scientific literature that the returns to strategic teaching are diminishing after 10 hours of it. “When a student fails to grasp the main idea of a passage, the problem is almost never that the student lacks a ‘strategy,’” Hendrick writes in an article. March 2026 Newsletter. “The problem is that they don’t understand the words well enough. »
Too much screen time can also be a factor. “Kids aren’t reading as much anymore,” said Sarah Webb, senior director of Great Minds, a curriculum development company. Cell phones and video games have replaced books. And the less time children spend reading, the less opportunity they have to improve. A Scholastic white paper from March 2026, “Students are reading less and losing stamina: why sustained reading is more important than ever”, highlights the growing decline in reading among preteens and teens.
Meanwhile, the growing gap between fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores in the South has teachers questioning the assumption that middle schoolers already know how to read, Webb said.
“They used to say that progress in school was learning to read and then reading to learn,” Webb said. “Now people realize that both need to last much longer. ‘Reading to learn’ should start earlier and ‘learning to read’ needs to continue well beyond third grade.”
NAEP reading scores in 4 Southern states over the past decade
After a decade of preparation, Mississippi officially launched its reading reforms in 2013. Louisiana began making changes with the introduction of the Common Core Standards around the same time, according to literacy advocate Karen Vaites. Alabama’s reforms began in 2019 and Tennessee’s in 2020.
Mississippi
Fourth year
Eighth grade
Louisiana
Fourth year
Eighth grade
Alabama
Fourth year
Eighth grade
Tennessee
Fourth year
Eighth grade
Charts created with NAEP Data Exploreran online tool. The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a federal test taken every two years by a sample of students to measure reading and math skills in every state and across the country. The 2021 test was postponed due to the pandemic.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
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The article Southern States Boost Early Reading, But Progress Stagns in Middle School appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
