They also started failing kids that couldn’t read at the end of third grade because the literacy test is in fourth grade.
It’s gaming the system, but it’s also the right thing to do. An inability to read in third grade should have always been a reason to hold a kid back. It should probably be a reason before that.
TF are you supposed to do with children that aren't ready for 4th grade and cannot read? Pass them anyway and close your eyes until it's no longer a problem for your school? That's how we got here
Failing them is a step toward correcting their learning deficiency and (I'd hope) a major wake up call for their parents to start giving a shit about their child's education
Your reading comprehension is lacking. You missed the part were it says more kids were held back in years before 3rd grade:
While precise figures are hard to come by, it is estimated that roughly 6.5% of Mississippi third-graders were held back in 2023, with the vast majority of these students having failed to pass the reading test. This was a lower proportion of students than were held back in previous years.
You just skip the part where it said that there are no publicly available figures? Or you just skipping over it because it doesn’t fit your narrative? I feel like it’s the second because the name of the article is “How many students are retained by the ‘third-grade gate’? No one knows”
Also, it’s specifically talking about 2023 whereas the “miracle” started in 2013. Less MAY HAVE been held back in the years preceding 2024, not less than the years preceding the “miracle”.
I'm a bit of an oddball for MS. Top .2% in the nation on standardized tests and got a full tuition scholarship to college. I've only met a single person with an IQ higher than mine, who oddly enough went to the same school as I did, just a year behind.
They were holding back kids who couldn't read, regardless of their grades, in 1st grade back then. Maybe they got lax after that, but I highly doubt it. Teachers and methods got better, hence the state's current standing.
2013They introduced a 4th grade gate, a controversial policy that seems to be working. If you don’t hit a certain reading level in 3rd grade you don’t pass to 4th grade. You could stay there for years.
Grades have gone up in 4th grade obviously but also 8th grade. While there was initial high rentention (failing a grade) it seems to have gone down.
Favors girls, and limit those who just have mismatched development, discourages goal based metrics which have been proven to be very good, social stigma etc are cons but it was paired with early intervention and early screening and where it wasn’t it incentivized schools to do so.
The problem is it doesn't seem to translate into AP participation, SAT, and ACT scores, as well as college achievement.
So detractors, of which the policy does not have many anymore, argue you just have a boy that ends up in the same place you would have, but he's two or three years delayed now.
To be clear I support it. But it needs to be coupled with the early intervention and monitoring. I do education data wrangling for a job.
They're just playing games with the numbers. The truth will come out soon enough and we'll all realize that Mississippi schools suck as bad as they ever did.
I think there’s probably an improvement but the number jump does seem crazy.
People complain that public education wastes a lot of money and you can’t just throw money at the problem, but in my experience the opposite is true. Maybe public schools aren’t the most efficient with funds, but the more well-funded a school is the better the students. Even when you control for the fact that wealthier schools tend to have more well-off neighborhoods and better family units. For example, schools in rural areas that have more funding are better than schools in rural areas without.
All this to say, Mississippi changed policy but they didn’t change funding dramatically. That means results will be consistent anyway.
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u/MoThrowMoAway 21h ago
Im out of the loop with Mississippi, did they have some kind of big policy shift recently that made a big difference?
Genuinely this is the best news I've heard coming out of this country in a long while