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The US entered day two of a government shutdown, with over 750,000 people immediately furloughed on day one. Oregon scientists successfully used skin cells to create human eggs. The UN voted to replace the current police mission in Haiti with a larger military force. Jane Goodall, a renowned conservationist, died at age 91 (free).
By Max Towey
Mississippi does not fare well in well-being metrics.
Of 50 US states, the Magnolia State ranks 49th in poverty rate, 50th in household income, 49th in obesity rate, 50th in homicide rate, 49th in bachelor’s degree attainment rate, 50th in advanced degree attainment rate, and 50th in life expectancy. On average, men live a full decade shorter in Mississippi than they do in Hawaii or Massachusetts. Mississippi is a beautiful state with great people, barbecue, and hospitality, but well-being metrics aren’t its strong suit.
Yet Mississippi is turning the page on one important metric.
The prominent Annie E. Casey Foundation releases an annual report that tracks the well-being of kids across various categories. One of those categories is K-12 education.
At the top of this year’s K-12 ranking were the usual suspects, like Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Utah. But there, in 16th – ahead of Minnesota, Maryland, and California – was none other than Mississippi.
We had first read about the “Mississippi Miracle,” the nickname for Mississippi’s education turnaround, a few years ago. But what’s not getting reported as much is that it’s continued and even accelerated. From 2012 to 2022, Mississippi jumped from 48th to 39th. It then rose to 32nd in 2023, 30th in 2024, and all the way to 16th this year.
Mississippi’s educational upswing makes it a nationwide outlier. After all, when the Department of Education released its “Nation’s Report Card” earlier this month, it sent chills down the spines of policymakers and teachers across the country.
The Report Card – the nation’s first since Covid – paints a grim picture. Average math and reading scores hit their lowest levels since 2005 and 1992, respectively – the two years the survey started tracking the scores. A third of eighth graders are below basic in reading, underscoring a persistent crisis. College readiness took a hit, too, with only 33% prepared for college math and 35% for reading coursework, both down from 37% pre-pandemic.
Overall, scores remain well below 2019 levels, suggesting that the damage done from school lockdowns during Covid may be permanent. Only two states surpassed their pre-pandemic marks, and then in a single grade and subject: Louisiana in fourth-grade reading and Mississippi in fourth-grade math.
Yet that doesn’t capture Mississippi’s progress: In 2024, its students improved across all tested subjects and scored the state’s highest-ever proficiency rates.
So how has Mississippi done it? What can other states learn? That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.
In 2013, Mississippi’s kids had a reading problem, and – with the lowest household income and highest child poverty rate in the country – the odds were stacked against it to figure it out.
At the time, a vast majority of Mississippi children were unable to read at their grade levels. Four out of five fourth graders could not read with proficiency. Nevertheless, teachers would promote them to the next grade for social reasons. The state needed a change, and so it decided to go back to the basics.
That year, Governor Phil Bryant (R) signed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) into law with a goal of ensuring that Mississippi students were reading at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. To do this, it promoted a new approach to reading that focused on phonetics and instituted a policy of holding back third graders who couldn’t read with proficiency.
To implement the LBPA, Mississippi trained thousands of teachers, added literacy coaches, and expanded pre-K pilots. The state invested $15M into this training and sought to ensure that kids who were held back would get the attention they needed to get back on track. Critics thought some students would simply stay held back for years and that the social stigma would be enormous for those students. But that’s not what happened at all.
State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright recalled in an interview with McKinsey, “There was a culture of low expectations for children and adults. Our standards had been evaluated by two outside organizations; one referred to them as ‘horrendous,’ and the other referred to them as ‘the worst in the nation.’” Wright said that it wasn’t just about laws; they needed local support.
“That whole first year, I had more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners than I’ve ever had in my entire life. This is the deep, red South. Relationships matter in most places, but here they really, really matter. So people got to know me,” she said.
Central to Mississippi’s reforms was the controversial “third-grade gate” – a policy requiring students to demonstrate reading proficiency on a state assessment before advancing to fourth grade. The move was designed not as punishment but as an intervention.
Critics thought the third-grade gate wouldn’t work, citing “emotional damage” the kids and families would feel and the toll it would take on schools. But Wright had a game plan: Rather than being put back into the normal classroom, retained students get a dedicated year with specialized reading support, smaller classes, and evidence-based curricula to build foundational skills.
A May 2025 Education Week analysis suggested the real boost comes from the intensive support systems during the retained year, not just repetition, with retention (being held back) accounting for only about 22% of overall literacy improvements. Critics tend to argue that retention can harm self-esteem, increase dropout risks, or disproportionately affect minorities. In Mississippi, however, the structured approach mitigates this: Retained students often outperform promoted peers who barely passed, and long-term data shows no spike in dropouts.
Granted, implementation of the third-grade gate wasn't smooth at first. In the policy's debut year (2014-15), about 15% of third-graders were initially flagged for retention, though after retests and appeals, the actual rate was around 9%. By 2024-25, initial pass rates hit a record 77.3% on the first attempt, up from 75.7% the prior year. Final pass rates after retests reached 84-85%.
Retention rates have since dropped to under 5% statewide, as early interventions – like kindergarten screenings and tutoring – catch issues sooner. Now, 16 states plus the District of Columbia have a reading proficiency requirement to pass into fourth grade (Florida started the trend under Governor Jeb Bush (R) in 2003).
This policy, combined with Mississippi’s new emphasis on the “science of reading,” has resulted in a massive upswing in testing performance across the state. No group has felt this more in the Magnolia State than the bottom 10% of students who – as shown in the chart below – have improved from 2013 to 2024, while every other state’s bottom 10% have dropped.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
The new Nation’s Report Card was the latest great news for Mississippi.
In 2024, Mississippi’s fourth-graders scored 239 in math – up 5 points from 2022 and above the national average of 237. For reading, fourth-graders hit 214, above the national average of 212. The state ranked 16th overall for fourth-graders, a huge leap from its 49th-place days a decade ago. It improved across all four major areas of the Nation’s Report Card (fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading).
This is all happening despite Mississippi’s limited per-pupil spending, which ranks 44th nationally.
Mississippi's “science-of-reading” model – which emphasizes phonetics and evidence-based instruction – is also earning widespread adoption. 40 states and DC have passed science-of-reading laws since 2013, emphasizing phonetics and evidence-based instruction. Thirteen states plus DC now require third-grade retention for non-proficient readers, often with support structures modeled after Mississippi.
Given that education remains primarily a state and local affair in the US, Mississippi provides hope for other states that are struggling across the country. States and districts handle 90% of funding, curriculum decisions, teacher certification, and day-to-day operations, allowing innovations like Mississippi's LBPA to flourish without federal mandates.
Who would’ve thought that the country would be looking to Mississippi for inspiration? If education is any guide, in a generation, Mississippi may no longer be a laughingstock in the other well-being metric rankings – it may be getting the last laugh.
Editor’s Note
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Thanks for reading. We’d love to hear your reactions to this story, especially from our Mississippi readers. Send in your thoughts here.
A bunch of you wrote in yesterday about net zero and Trump’s war on wind. Below are some of those emails.
Lewis wrote:
In the UK, the net zero 2025 policies are incredibly frustrating and also just feel like another form of tax, a stealth green tax.
It drives up costs and resources for businesses who have to navigate these policies, such as requirements for carbon reduction plans and I bet the figures used to calculate these are are pretty baseless. Needless to say these costs are always passed on to the consumer.
Energy costs are through the roof along with everything else in the UK (along with our huge cultural problems from decades of poorly managed immigration and integration)
It causes huge uncertainty in markets such as the auto industry and it all feels a bit pointless and a scam when you have things like Adblue on diesel cars.
Adblue isn’t concentrated so we’re just shipping tonnes and tonnes of water around to stores in articulated trucks which do about 7mpg, that just doesn’t make sense to me despite the benefits.
This is without mentioning the amount of fossil fuels that the BRIC countries burn (which to me is entirely understandable and justifiable) which undermines the effect of net zero globally
Absolutely love your work and looking forward to seeing you cover the UK more
Peter said:
Just replying to your question on where your audience stands on the net-zero debate. I’ll start by saying that I’m a 22-year old, fresh out of college and I’ve never had to be truly financially independent in order to survive. Luckily, I come from an upper middle class background, so admittedly I’ve never had to worry too much about energy costs. With that being said, I think that it’s an absolute no-brainer for governments to begin working towards a net-zero carbon emission initiative by 2050. Sure it’s going to get expensive, but what will be even more expensive is trying to fit billions of people in a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable due to climate change. The science is absolutely overwhelming. There is a broad consensus that carbon emissions have contributed to global warming, which is contributing to abnormal ocean acidity, crop failure, natural disasters, and more. All things which make life on Earth more expensive for the average person. If we as a collective don’t start taking climate change seriously by prioritizing and actualizing long-term solutions, survival will become unaffordable for the majority of our population by the end of the century. I’m no expert on the nuances of the policy approach towards clean energy, but I wholly support the overall movement.
An anonymous reader wrote in:
I do not believe net zero will solve global warming. There are many factors involved, some of which are unknown or beyond our control. Although politicians want to divide us on the issue I believe we should be good stewards of our planet, with our eye one its long term preservation. This issue is very similar to, and must be dealt with in context of limited natural resources. Governments should encourage evironmental technologies without dictating business or undermining necessary infrastructure. Not an an easy task.
And Gus said:
As a person who's lived in Iowa, from a family of farmers in Nebraska, and have seen the effects of wind turbines in the water in Europe, I have a lot of opinions on wind power. #1. Farmers love to complain and hate to share. No matter how much money they are offered, farmers refuse to lease grazing land for wind farms—despite the cattle still being able to graze and are too stupid to care. The argument that they are being humane by saving the birds is a joke. Farmers kill more animals every week in their combines than a turbine will kill in a month. That argument is very valid in off-shore turbines however, and I am against those. #2. Recyclability is a major factor of renewable energy. The only part of the turbine right now that isn't recyclable are the fiberglass propellers, and methods to do so are being worked on. So if wind power is invested in, the recyclability of fiberglass propellers will be too. #3 Who cares if they're ugly? Last I checked, these turbines go up in the middle of nowhere, so all three people who see them daily can deal with it. And those who have to drive through it are given something to look at finally. Power lines, cell towers, and billboards are all things we've grown accustomed to.
And don’t miss our latest stories if you haven’t read them yet:
See you again tomorrow.
—Max and Max
