Mississippi Miracle
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I think this is the link for "the how"
https://www.the74million.org/article/there-really-was-a-mississippi-miracle-in-reading-states-should-learn-from-it/ -
Wow. Those are amazing results.
Will Linda McMahon be known as the person who killed it?
When Mississippi lawmakers in 2013 approved legislation to improve students’ basic reading skills, it fell to State Superintendent Carey Wright to make it happen.
She ensured that all K-3 teachers were trained in the “Science of Reading” and hired literacy coaches at schools that had the highest percentage of low-achievers. guide the effort, Wright turned to the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based at Florida State University, one of 10 federally funded labs nationwide. Little-known even among many educators, the labs, created by Congress in 1965, work with states and school districts to implement research-based practices.
By 2019, Wright and her colleagues had pulled off what is now known as the “Mississippi Miracle,” with students in this deep red state making greater literacy gains than in any other. Fourth-graders in Mississippi rose from 49th in the nation to 29th — adjusting for demographics, it now ranks near the top of the U.S. in both fourth-grade reading and math, behind just Florida and Texas, according to the Urban Institute.
“They were huge partners with us,” Wright said of the lab in an interview this week. “It’s just this amazing group of researchers and content-area specialists.”
But that distinction wasn’t enough to save the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast — or the nine other RELs, as they’re called. On Thursday, the U.S. Education Department announced that it had terminated $336 million in contracts with the labs, saying auditors had uncovered “wasteful and ideologically driven spending not in the interest of students and taxpayers.”
The move has left researchers and literacy advocates shaking their heads. A director at a top research firm with many federal contracts, who asked not to be identified to avoid retaliation, said she got the sense from the sudden, broad cuts that “no one went in and took a really careful look at where the RELs were being helpful.”
While some lab projects likely haven’t led to improvements in practices or student outcomes, she’s doubtful that department officials even pored over such data. “Someone decided that this whole program needed to go.”
