The Federalist reports that 2 poor, Southern states - Mississippi and Louisiana - have had outstanding reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP measures the reading and math skills of the nation’s fourth and eighth grade students. Those states have accomplished this by emphasizing phonics, sounding out unfamiliar words. Minority kids have shown particular gains.
The progress among black students is particularly impressive. According to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, the reading scores of the state’s black fourth graders have improved from 45th to third place during the same period. This reflects the effectiveness of Mississippi’s literacy program, which has provided a learning gain equivalent to a full year of schooling. Moreover, the state’s graduation rate has seen a significant rise from 72 percent in 2013 to 89.9 percent in 2024.
Why is this particularly striking to me? The other DrC educated elementary school teachers for most of her career. She has been a life-long advocate of phonics, often facing bitter opposition from colleagues who favored other methods which produced substantially poorer results.
Her approach has always made sense to me, sounding out words is something I’ve done since early childhood. We both have been voracious readers since we were very young.
She talks about reading the dictionary and the yellow pages, as did I. I remember weekly trips to the local library with my parents to check out books. As kids, we both read our parents’ magazines that were around the house.
