Holy moly! I thought good news was dead! I was wondering if this had to do with all the bad press that US schools have been getting over the bad ways that it was acceptable to teach reading to...
Holy moly! I thought good news was dead!
I was wondering if this had to do with all the bad press that US schools have been getting over the bad ways that it was acceptable to teach reading to kids in public schools, and sure enough the article attributes this growth to mandates to teaching phonics. In an era where it seems like no good changes can be done, this is a shining example that proves that positive changes are achievable.
The statistics in this story are based on rankings, which compare states to each other for the same year. This seems like a convoluted way to do it if you want to know what the change was in a...
The statistics in this story are based on rankings, which compare states to each other for the same year. This seems like a convoluted way to do it if you want to know what the change was in a single state? I wonder what's a good source to get time-series graphs for each state?
Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022. Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in most other states.
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There is still far to go for children in the Gulf South, especially considering the disruptions to schooling from the pandemic and several major hurricanes and tornadoes. Mississippi, after stellar gains in the 2019 National Assessment of Education Progress, saw reading scores drop in 2022, although they are still at the national average. Around two out of five Louisiana third-graders, a particularly hard-hit age group, could not read at grade level at the end of last year. The same goes for over one-fifth of third-graders in Alabama.
Still, evidence suggests these states have made promising gains for low-income kids in particular. In 2019, Alabama ranked 49th in NAEP reading scores for low-income fourth-graders; in 2022, it ranked 27th. Amid the pandemic that saw most states lose ground, Louisiana soared from 42nd to 11th. Mississippi ranks second-highest in the country, after Florida.
Holy moly! I thought good news was dead!
I was wondering if this had to do with all the bad press that US schools have been getting over the bad ways that it was acceptable to teach reading to kids in public schools, and sure enough the article attributes this growth to mandates to teaching phonics. In an era where it seems like no good changes can be done, this is a shining example that proves that positive changes are achievable.
The statistics in this story are based on rankings, which compare states to each other for the same year. This seems like a convoluted way to do it if you want to know what the change was in a single state? I wonder what's a good source to get time-series graphs for each state?
Here's a chart for Mississippi.
The reading score in 2013 is 208.5 and for 2022 it's 217.16. Looks like it's a real increase.
From the article:
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