For decades, the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” has been used as a popular saying, particularly in the South, to excuse another state’s poor performance in various rankings on topics like education, poverty, economic development, healthcare, obesity, life expectancy, crime, and many other issues. No matter where other states fell in the metrics, Mississippi was always at or near the bottom, perpetually bailing out the other less-than-stellar states from the embarrassment of being labeled “the worst” in any given category. The phrase has become such a common refrain that even elected officials parrot it, with incumbent California Governor Gavin Newsom recently drawing on the adage with a post on Twitter/X showcasing Mississippi’s murder rate at 266% higher than California’s, as part of his recent step into a more aggressive style of politics. And while “Thank God for Mississippi” has been a go-to reassurance line for state leaders and non-Mississippians alike to fall back on, reality tells us a different story: the sarcastic quip might actually be true.

Throwing a Hail Mary

Although Mississippi still faces many challenges across a host of areas, one area that it has gained attention for is education, specifically through the lens of elementary reading skills. Further, the state has not only turned around their educational attainment metrics, but is becoming a national leader on them. In 2013, after a report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) ranked Mississippi as 49th in the nation for childhood literacy, then-Governor Phil Bryant signed a flurry of educational reforms, now affectionately referred to as the “Mississippi Miracle,” that targeted the state’s literacy programs and fundamentally changed the way the state viewed education. The evidence-based approach hinged on four major factors: rejecting the notion of Whole Language theory in favor of phonics-based education, funding critical education resources and teacher training, early detection of literacy weaknesses with direct intervention and tutoring for struggling students, and mandatory retention of third-grade students who fail reading proficiency exams. Some aspects of the plan, specifically holding third-grade children back and introducing more stringent teaching standards, were met with criticism. Education professionals sounded alarms, fearing third-grade retention rates would surge with the new state mandate and warning that adding increased training for Mississippi teachers would disincentivize young professionals from entering the field. The only issue for critics? It worked.

Today, the percentage of Mississippi third-graders held back sits at 6.5%, which is a reduction from 2013 when the program was implemented. Of these, the majority of the 6.5% are held back due to missing the mark on their required reading exams. Incumbent Governor Tate Reeves backs up the policy, claiming that “Many folks said, ‘Look, you can’t do that. If you do that, fifty percent of our kids are going to be held back… But we had the exact opposite experience.” Using the third-grade tollgate, the Mississippi model created buy-in at all levels: teachers were focusing on making sure children learned the curriculum, parents were more involved to ensure their child was not held back, and the students took to new forms of learning in ways they previously couldn’t. Minds grew, opportunities expanded, and children were applying a new, legitimate education system to areas outside of reading. 

The Little Red States That Could

Nearly 10 years after passage, the outcomes speak for themselves. As of 2024, Mississippi ranks 21st in overall education, boasts the 9th highest average fourth-grade reading score in the nation, and has the 16th highest fourth-grade math score. Demographically, Mississippi is home to the largest share of African American children in the nation, with approximately 46.86% of all school-age children identified as black or African American. And while we know that African American children are often disadvantaged when it comes to educational attainment, Mississippi is defying this trend and ranks 3rd in both fourth-grade mathematics and reading comprehension for African American students. For Latino students, Mississippi comes in 1st for fourth-grade reading and second for fourth-grade mathematics. When controlling for income inequality and poverty, Mississippi ranks 1st in the nation for fourth-grade reading comprehension and 2nd for mathematics, even while 17.8% of Mississippi’s total population lives at or below the poverty line. For a ten-year period, it’s a meteoric rise if there ever was one. 

In the wake of these results, other states have taken notice. Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia have all implemented similar standards to raise their NAEP reading scores. In short order, these states have seen historic rises in their attainment, defying national trends, and pushing for further increases in educational achievement while national scores erode. In the Volunteer State, Tennessee entered the top 25 for reading and mathematics scores for the first time in state history in both fourth and eighth-grade assessments after moving to a Mississippi-style model of instruction. Further, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when academic performance cratered nationally as teachers and students adapted (or failed to adapt) to a new environment, Alabama and Louisiana defied the trends and either maintained or increased their reading scores during the national lockdowns. That success has continued, and as of 2024, Louisiana, once a fellow bottom-tier state in childhood literacy, now outperforms the national average in elementary age reading performance.

These once-forgotten, often-mocked states are not only bucking the trend, they’re completely redefining the national education landscape. Serving as examples of how red state leadership can not only excel in their own class by beating out other GOP peers like Texas, Arkansas, and The Dakotas; they also beat several Democrat-controlled states such as Michigan, Oregon, Maine, and California. The table below illustrates the difference using the fourth-grade NAEP reading score, numerical change of fourth-grade reading skills over the last two years, and the percentage of fourth-grade students who attain a basic level of reading attainment as defined by the NAEP exams.

Bridging the Resource Divide

As successful as the Mississippi model has been both inside the state and as other states have begun to implement similar programs, it’s important to remember that these improvements have not happened in a vacuum. Many of these states have low economic achievement and hold a disproportionately large share of impoverished communities. The four states (Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky) discussed throughout all have a statewide poverty rate of at least 13.5% (Tennessee), with the highest topping out at 18.7% (Louisiana). Compared to the Democrat-controlled states in the above table, the only state with a comparable poverty rate is Michigan, which is statistically tied with Tennessee in terms of poverty, even though they underperform the Volunteer state by 6 points in reading scores. Most notably, Mississippi bests California by 7 points in fourth-grade reading attainment, but does so while having 6% more individuals in poverty statewide.

Jumps in red state educational attainment have been  impressive, but even more remarkable is the fact that not only are these Southern states raising the bar for themselves and their peers, they’re doing so with significantly fewer resources. An evaluation of per-pupil funding shows that states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee spend less than $13,800 per K-12 student on average while Oregon, California, and Maine all spend $18,000 or more. Fundamentally, blue states are frequently spending more on education, only to achieve less than their red state counterparts who fund schools at a much lower rate.

Looking specifically at Oregon, the state is cutting an annual check for nearly $11.2 billion ($19,376 per student) for K-12 funding, 15th for total spending in the nation, but ranks well below the national average in elementary education. Using 2024 reading comprehension data, approximately 48% of all Oregon fourth graders scored below the NAEP’s basic proficiency metrics in reading. Stated another way, nearly half of all Oregon fourth graders do not possess the functional skills to read and interpret basic written information. The same can be said for California and Maine, which spend a similar sum, and yet both states see 44% of all fourth-graders reading below a basic level. In 2015, Michigan invested over $2 billion into state public schools over a ten year period to increase staffing, create free early childhood education, and provide free school meals. All of these programs were expected to help bolster public school performance, yet produced zero returns. By the end of the ten year funding, Michigan’s education ratings in both reading and mathematics continued to decline, even while per-pupil funding soared. And even though national leaders in education tend to have higher per-pupil funding, such as Massachusetts or New Jersey, these other well-funded blue state boondoggles beg the question: if funding is supposed to be a key driver of performance, why are more resource-rich blue states lagging traditionally poorer and less economically competitive red states?

Poor Education Policy is an Active Decision

In order to solve this question, it helps to examine the types of reforms these Democratic-controlled states have implemented or proposed, contrasted to that of the Mississippi model. In Maine, the Bangor School Superintendent cites hold-over impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased device screen time as key factors of failing literacy rates, which has prompted a focus on connecting children to books. The rationale behind this approach is to systematically pair children with books related to personal interests in an attempt to spark interests in reading. While this method sounds great when taken at face value - more books in the hands of kids is always a net positive - it doesn’t solve the underlying issue; to put it bluntly, giving more books to kids who can’t read will not simply make them start reading. Politicians have zeroed in on this and the Maine Department of Education has debuted a new plan to try and salvage the state’s falling literacy rates. The program begins by connecting schools to newer training resources after an independent study of Maine public schools found that only 20% of school administrators were using accepted teaching materials, but will be a multi-year approach to begin outfitting teachers with the new curriculum.

Others, such as Oregon, have quietly lowered the standards for state education. In a move backed by the Oregon Education Association, a major teacher’s union in the state representing nearly 40,000 educators, the state abandoned its essential skill graduation requirements that mandated graduates have proficient reading comprehension and basic mathematical abilities prior to earning a diploma. This change originally occurred back in 2023, as the county was still handling the downstream educational loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, but had been extended to cover all graduates through the 2027-2028 school year. The OEA goes further, stating that standardized tests and aptitude benchmarks are a “racist weapon” used to “degrade black and brown minds,” claiming that these tests have “never been accurate and reliable measures of student learning.” Relaxing educational requirements at a time where only 51% of Oregon students can read at a basic level is not only reckless, it cements a commitment to mediocre literacy attainment which fundamentally handicaps students in later life.

In response, California has started course correcting via a law requiring the “science of reading” in state classes after a tense year-long battle between lawmakers and the teachers unions. A change that’s been in the works for years, previous progressive opposition against the bill, which runs contrary to National Institute of Health research showing the positive impacts of phonics-based instruction, claimed the law restricts a teacher’s ability to adapt classroom instruction to individual students and would disproportionately hurt non-native English speakers. Additional research refuted this, as phonics-based reading instruction such as word decomposition exercises and word sounding have been shown to help build connections between English and their native language. Mississippi has, once again, proven this to be the case, as they boast the highest national rank for fourth-grade reading scores for Hispanic students. This year, after the release of 2024 NAEP scores showing California’s reading score decline below those of red state averages, the opposition folded. The bill, albeit an amended version, sailed through the legislature and was signed by Governor Newsom in early October. The bill takes a page from Mississippi’s playbook and combines stricter reading curriculum with new, more effective, and more strategic materials for instructors. While this new approach will take years to implement, leaders are committed to producing tangible improvements in learning outcomes and to achieve something no Californian has ever aspired to: compete with Mississippi.

Even though much has been said about the educational improvements in Mississippi and other Southern counterparts since their inception back in 2013, very little of this advice has been implemented in other states with subpar educational attainment until now. Contrary to the education reforms of the early 2000s with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act and near-universal adoption of Common Core standards, the Mississippi model has yet to see meaningful adoption outside of its immediate regional area. However, that does not make their feat any less impressive. The dedication, attention, effort, and resources required to take a red state that has historically been one of the worst in the nation for education and transform it into a model that Democrat-controlled states would begin to follow in the course of implementing their own reforms is monumental. What Mississippi has proven, both to themselves and to the rest of the United States, is that bad education policy is an active decision.

In an era of deeply divided, bitter political polarization, one will often struggle to find any issue where one side voluntarily cedes ground to the opposition. Neither side likes to admit the other is “winning” on any measure. However, that creates a race-to-the-bottom style culture where both conservative states and liberal states are competing for the “best of the worst” designation, rather than working towards the best interests for their constituents. Especially in states that are relatively uncompetitive for one party, any admission that the opposition is succeeding in some way is an admission of defeat. This simply does not have to be the case. No singular party has a monopoly on success or successful policy implementation. Indeed, everyone should be thankful that Mississippi cracked the code on improving literacy rates and has been changing the way legislators think about educational outcomes for over a decade. Their successful gambit, coupled with the fact that their system has been exported to other states with similar success, puts them squarely at the forefront of the national conversation when it comes to positive education reform. The Magnolia State is telling us how to fix our education system, if only we are willing to listen.