Opinion | America Has a Reading Problem. Mississippi Has a Solution.

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I’m Nicholas Kristoff. I’m a columnist for The New York Times. And I’ve got a break for you. I’m actually going to tell you some good news today.

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Kids across the country are going back to school, and many of us have been worried about education in the US. A fifth of Americans struggle to read, and a majority of high school seniors are not proficient readers. This is something that holds so many millions of Americans back. And it also holds America back.

So we have a real problem with education across the country. But there’s a little ray of hope from the most unlikely of places, and that is Mississippi. They have figured out how to dramatically improve reading and math in the early grades. Mississippi fourth graders have risen from just about the bottom to about the middle of the country in outcomes. But if you adjust for demographics, then the results are even more phenomenal.

Among kids in poverty in the United States, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for the best in the country in reading tests and second in math. That’s particularly important because Mississippi historically was just about the worst place in the country for education, and even today, remains the worst for child poverty. To put it really bluntly, if Mississippi can do this and enjoy that kind of progress, there should be hope for all the rest of us.

Earlier this year, I went to Mississippi to see in person what is happening in those classrooms.

I walk into a second grade classroom in Jackson, Mississippi.

And the kids are sitting on a rug, and the teacher is taking them through a book about vegetables.

And the book is being projected in front of them, and the kids are reading aloud.

And they’re reading and recognizing words like “vegetable” and “eggplant.”

And I’m finding this is pretty exciting. And then they read together —

And I thought, wow, I had no idea that second graders, especially in a high poverty district, would recognize words like “nourishing” and read them so fluently.

For decades, the US has been torn apart by education wars, and in particular, by reading wars. And there have been these debates about how best to teach kids to read. I think there’s growing evidence for what is called the science of reading, and that is what Mississippi really embraced. They emphasized a new curriculum which focuses more on phonics, on sounding out words, and tutoring kids who fall behind.

And one of the keys to what Mississippi did was not just institute a lot of new curriculum changes to focus on reading, but also to create accountability by making sure that all kids pass a test at the end of third grade. The test at the end of third grade makes sure that those kids can actually read, or otherwise, they’re typically not able to move on to fourth grade.

This third grade test, it just — it galvanizes everybody. And this just focuses every kid in the state on making sure that they can read by the end of the third grade and focuses families on it, teachers, schools, and it works. It seems to get kids reading. And kind of everybody’s surprised. It also meant that kids do better in math. That seems to be because if kids actually learn to read and are excited by school, then they begin to enjoy math as well.

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Mississippi’s gains have attracted a lot of attention, and so other states have tried to copy its approach. And to be frank, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Mississippi just enjoyed first rate leadership on education. It had a outstanding state school superintendent. There was a business technology tycoon who was originally from Mississippi, and he donated $100 million to a reading institute.

And what was important was not just the $100 million, although that counted, but also that he was really influential across the political spectrum. People listened to him. And when he said that Mississippi has to get its act together and the way to do that is to really focus on evidence-based strategies to improve reading, people listened.

So I’m hoping that as we go back to school, officials and administrators around the country see what they can learn from Mississippi. It’s not easy, but there is so much at stake for the country and for our children’s fundamental ability to read and to learn. This is worth it.