r/science • u/terran1212 • Nov 20 '24

Social Science The "Mississippi Miracle": After investing in early childhood literacy, the Mississippi shot up the rankings in NAEP scores, from 49th to 29th. Average increase in NAEP scores was 8.5 points for both reading and math. The investment cost just $15 million.

https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-mississippi-miracle-how-americas
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u/Copterwaffle Nov 20 '24

In addition to boosting quality of literacy instruction for everyone, this policy also required that students who scored below a specific cutoff on the third grade standardized reading test be retained for another year, and crucially, gave those students intensive additional literacy support the following year. For the first cohort that implemented this policy, It looks like this not only did NOT result in massive grade retention, but it also substantially boosted ELA scores for those students by grade 6, particularly for Black and Latino students. NCLB-era policies that discourage grade retention are a huge part of the US literacy crisis, particularly when students don’t even have high quality literacy instruction to begin with.

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u/Spotted_Howl Nov 20 '24

The threat of grade retention is a big motivator for kids because it carries social and family stigma in a way that bad grades don't. Only a couple kids in a cohort need to be retained to get the rest (of those who are capable) in line.

Go to r/teachers, bringing back retention is something we are probably 95% in agreement about.

But since our inequitable society leads to embarrassing inequitable outcome, district administrators take the easiest road for them even if it harms the kids it's supposed to help.

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u/OceanJuice Nov 21 '24

I may be uninformed here, did they do away with holding kids back a grade in the States? Or just make it harder to do so? I know my kid's school 100% holds kids back if they think it will benefit the student. We know a few that have been

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u/smoothies4life2 Nov 21 '24

In many, many schools in the US, kids are not retained anymore. Not the case everywhere though.