Mississippi Is Doing Literacy Right, and California Could Learn a Thing or Two From the Magnolia State

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has no problem criticizing Mississippi when it comes to gun crime and welfare, but he's very tight-lipped about praising the Magnolia State when they're doing something right.

And Mississippi is doing something right when it comes to literacy.

In California, only 28% of Black students can read at a 'basic' level or above on the fourth-grade NAEP. In Mississippi, it's 52%. It's inexcusable, and it's a policy choice. New from me in the Argument:
— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) September 25, 2025

Here's more from the Argument:

This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation’s Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage.
In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level — which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad.
These numbers have been tumbling downhill in California and more widely across the U.S. for years now, and not just because of school closures during the pandemic. Nationwide, reading scores for fourth graders peaked back in 2015, and while the especially ugly 2022 outcomes were dismissed at first as COVID-19 outliers, scores have fallen further since. The decline is the worst for the kids who were already struggling; the test scores of the bottom 10% of students have dropped catastrophically.
But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVID and has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California’s on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.

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This is a policy choice.

In 2022, it was reported California was paying consultants $5,000 an hour to "lower educational standards:"

California's public school districts are paying an education consultant $5,000 an hour to lower educational standards and change the math curriculum, according to watchdog group Open the Books.
"Here we have a professor, she's involved in teacher training in the Oxnard School District in California. She signs a contract with the district to provide eight hours of this teacher training to the tune of $40,000," said Open the Books' Adam Andrzejewski. "When this comes out in the press through a whistleblower, she actually threatens to call the police and her lawyer on the whistleblower and Twitter actually removed the tweets that expose this contract."
Andrzejewski says Jo Boaler, a former Stanford math professor, is an advocate for a progressive form of math who believes "there is a rush for algebra and calculus in the classroom."
"These are the ideas that are being brought into these districts where the students already have learning issues, and the critics allege that these students are being slowed down further," said Andrzejewski to The National Desk's Jan Jeffcoat. "All these contracts need the light of day. We need to be able to follow the money and hold people accountable."

And despite evidence that phonics-based instruction is more beneficial to reading, California schools have refused to mandate the use of the "science of reading" in state classrooms.

Mississippi, on the other hand, did away with progressive and newfangled education models and followed the science. As Townhall wrote back in May:

In contrast, "Southern states have seized on a political environment that allows them to do the things that matter," Frederick Hess, American Enterprise Institute education policy studies director, writes. "To drive improvement, it's easier if you have the politics of Mississippi than the politics of Massachusetts."
As a result, Black and low-income pupils are getting a better education in Deep South states such as Mississippi and Louisiana than in the "progressive" big cities of the North.
What is Mississippi doing right? According to The 74's Chad Aldeman, over the last decade, it has deployed literacy coaches to low-performing schools, prompted schools to screen pupils early for reading problems, and required holding back third graders not reaching reading proficiency.
Schools use "science of reading" phonics-based curricula, which require repetitive drills that education school professors and many teachers loathe, but young children thrive on. Parents are notified when their children are lagging and mobilized to help.

In 1966, Margaret McNamara founded Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation's largest literacy non-profit. The name is more accurate than you know. Students need reading skills not just to master content in English classes, but to be successful in all subjects. Students who cannot read science or history textbooks, or students who cannot comprehend a mathematical word problem, are going to struggle.

All of that goes back to the need for strong literacy curricula in schools.

Turns out Gavin Newsom could learn a thing or two from Mississippi and the Republicans who run the state.

Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to dismantle the Department of Education and ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.

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