Mississippi ranked 49th in the United States for elementary school literacy 10 years ago, when fourth graders were essentially an entire grade level behind the rest of the nation.
Fast-forward a decade and 85 percent of third graders in the Magnolia State passed the state reading assessment test in 2023, moving Mississippi up to No. 21 and showing the fastest growth in the country in reading comprehension, despite having one of the lowest per-pupil expenditure rates.
“People called it a miracle,” Kristen Wells-Wynn, literacy director for the Mississippi Department of Education, told The Epoch Times on July 3, “but we call it a marathon.”
For the coming academic year, teacher training in Mississippi will expand to higher grade levels, and other states, such as Maryland, will try to implement Mississippi’s early literacy model.
The change occurred in Mississippi when the state Department of Education began switching from the…
