When Mississippi reformed its reading curriculum in 2013, scores for the state’s elementary school students soared. Motivated by the” Mississippi miracle,”other Southern states did the same. But the miracle has actually struck a wall: middle school.
Results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have seen noteworthy improvements in 4th grade reading over the past decade, however far smaller sized gains in eighth grade. (Charts at the bottom of this story.)
Mississippi led the way by retraining instructors in the science of reading– which emphasizes phonics and other basic literacy abilities– and sending out coaches into schools. The state’s 4th graders went from near the bottom nationally to exceeding the nationwide average in 2024. Numerous called it the “Mississippi miracle.”
“Mississippi moved a mountain in fourth grade,” said Dan McGrath, a retired federal education official who oversaw the NAEP assessments. High- and low-achieving trainees both made gains. But when these fourth graders reached 8th grade, their development stalled. By 2019, more eighth graders were scoring at the bottom than in 2013. Scores dipped further throughout the pandemic, and by 2024, just greater accomplishing 8th graders recuperated a bit.
“When should we see the Mississippi miracle reach 8th grade? Why haven’t we seen it yet?” McGrath asked.
Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee began reforms later and might need more time. However McGrath’s concern remains.
Related: Checking out understanding loses in the classroom
Scientists and literacy supporters indicate a typical answer: Early reading reforms focused on phonics, which helped trainees decipher words, however translating alone is inadequate for skilled middle school reading, where the words are longer and the sentences are more made complex.
Timothy Shanahan, an experienced reading researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, stated reading direction need to continue after trainees learn to read. “It’s not phonics precisely,” he stated. Teachers need to break down multisyllabic words, teach word roots and odd spellings, and find time to check out thoroughly to build fluency with complicated texts.
Shanahan believes schools ought to teach students how to check out grade-level texts, even if they are tough, and offer guidance on vocabulary, syntax and sentence structure.
The research evidence is often dirty on exactly how to help older trainees with checking out comprehension. There’s extensive contract that background knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension methods are all important. But experts and supporters disagree about their relative value and just how much time to invest in them.
Numerous literacy advocates argue for more emphasis on background knowledge due to the fact that it’s hard to understand an unknown topic. For instance, even if I had a glossary of words, a technical medical short article including hereditary analysis would be lost on me. Scientists also state that many low-income kids aren’t exposed to as much art, travel and political news in your home as wealthier kids, which implies that lots of topics that show up in books are less familiar and more difficult to take in.
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Some research study has actually revealed appealing literacy improvements from building children’s knowledge. Harvard scientists discovered some success with specially designed social studies and science lessons (not checking out lessons). But a 2024 meta-analysis didn’t discover short-term reading gain from knowledge-building units in classrooms. It may be that it takes years for these lessons to enhance reading understanding. And that long arc of progress is challenging for scientists to track.
“There is no question that knowledge contributes in comprehension,” said Shanahan. “However it has been tough to discover how such knowledge might generalize. Simply put, if you teach kids about goldfish, that may improve their understanding of other goldfish texts, however will it have any other effect?”
There is also a dispute about the value of drilling trainees in checking out understanding questions, the kinds that are likely to come up on standardized tests, such as figuring out an author’s bottom line.
Carl Hendrick, a prominent supporter of clearly teaching children background knowledge and vocabulary and a professor at Academica University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, agrees that a percentage of strategy instruction can be helpful, such as having students practice composing a summary after reading something. However Hendrick concludes from the research literature that there are decreasing go back to technique direction after 10 hours of it. “When a trainee can not comprehend the main point of a passage, the problem is almost never ever that they lack a ‘method,'” Hendrick wrote in a March 2026 newsletter. “The problem is that they do not comprehend enough of the words.”
Excessive screen time may also be an element. “Kids aren’t checking out as much anymore,” stated Sarah Webb, a senior director at Great Minds, a curriculum maker. Cellular phones and computer game have replaced books. And the less time that kids practice reading, the less chance they need to get better at it. A March 2026 Scholastic white paper, “Students Read Less and Losing Stamina: Why Continual Reading Matters More Than Ever,” highlights the growing decrease in reading among preteens and teens.
Meanwhile, the growing gap in between fourth and eighth grade reading ratings in the South is triggering instructors to question the presumption that middle schoolers currently understand how to read, Webb said.
“They used to say the progression in school was you discover to read and then you read to learn,” Webb stated. “Now people understand it needs to be both for a lot longer. ‘Reading to find out’ should begin earlier, and ‘learning to read’ need to continue well past 3rd grade.”
Contact staffwriter Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].
This story about eighth-grade reading was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Register for Proof Pointsand other Hechinger newsletters.
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