‘Mississippi miracle’: Kids’ reading scores have soared in Deep South states

Education snobs like making fun of Alabama, Mississippi and the South in general.  They hate that Mississippi is leading the nation on the NAEP.  The numbers have been jiggered.

The NAEP is a test of educational progress administered by the federal Department of Education.  It’s one of the things the Department of Ed does that is beneficial.

One summer, I attended a 3-week teacher workshop on programming Lego robots.  This was 25 years ago.  There were 18 of us, with a third being from the Cleveland school district.  A teacher from Hudson was talking about how his district might strike for better pay.  He explained it.

“Hudson is one of the top 10 school districts in Ohio, so we should be in the top 10 for teacher pay.”

He was a young guy, and nice enough, but not wise.  I tried to let him down easy.

“If you took the teaching staff from Hudson, and swapped them with the teaching staff at a Cleveland school, after 5 years, do you really think the student scores would be any different?”

Of course not.  Demographics, parents and family income, play a huge part.  Individual teachers have a big influence on individual students, but not on district stats.

In educational rankings, this comes up all the time.  There is a quote I like from NFL coach Barry Switzer.

“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”

The Urban Institute explains how they adjust the NAEP scores.

We determine these adjustments by calculating how each individual student who takes the NAEP scores relative to students nationwide who are the same gender, age, and race or ethnicity and have the same free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status.

A bunch of poor, black kids who don’t speak English, are not going to test as well as rich, white kids who have been enrolled in enrichment activities since they were 6 years old. Comparing those two groups of students doesn’t tell us anything about the effectiveness of educational policies in a state.

The methodology of the Urban Institute can be debated, but the goal is reasonable.

Every year, Cleveland.com publishes the rankings for Ohio schools.

It wouldn’t take much for Cleveland.com to generate an adjusted ranking based on average property values.  Looking just at Cuyahoga County.

Solon            Score:  111.1      Average property value:  $375k      Median household income:  $135k

Way down the list, is Mayfield.

Mayfield     Score:  96.0      Average property value:  $187k      Median household income:  $62k

Without any first-hand knowledge, I bet there isn’t much difference in the attitude and ability of Mayfield teachers compared to Solon teachers.

As a measure of educational effectiveness, the adjusted NAEP rankings are legit.  Schools teach the students they have, and Mississippi is doing a good job.