It started with a red book.
A boy in a South Jackson classroom who could not make sense of the words on the page. A teacher who had learned to read by phonics and watched her own students guess at words instead. A state that had sat at the bottom of every list that mattered for as long as anyone could remember.
What grew out of those three threads was the Literacy-Based Promotion Act of 2013, a law built on the science of reading and carried by a coalition that refused to care who got the credit: a governor and a legislature, a chamber of commerce, a radio host, philanthropists who funded the proof before the state would pay for the program, and nineteen thousand teachers who retrained themselves at their own kitchen tables.
The pages of Unveiling the Mississippi Miracle tell the whole story, from the two centuries that made the hole so deep to the ordinary Tuesday in a Mississippi classroom when a struggling child opens a book and reads the page.
“It is amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit.”
A fourth grader at Marshall Elementary in South Jackson, repeating third grade behind him, learns to read when Mrs. Henley teaches him phonics. He runs home to tell his mother he is not dumb.
Governor William Winter brings kindergarten and compulsory attendance to Mississippi. A 27-year-old Jaycee president named Phil Bryant helps build the coalition and never forgets what he saw.
The first state-by-state reading test. Mississippi finishes 50th of 50, and stays at or near the bottom for the next twenty years.
Jim and Sally Barksdale give $100 million to create the Barksdale Reading Institute. Thirteen years of research, coaching, and school-level data follow, producing the map the 2013 reform would be built on.
Governor Bryant stands at Northwest Rankin High School and says the numbers out loud: 78 percent of fourth graders not proficient in reading, ranked 49th. He names five focus areas. Reading is the first.
Back in the same auditorium, Governor Bryant signs the law at an antique desk from a Mississippi schoolhouse. Dr. Laurie Todd-Smith, his education policy advisor, had worked on the bill from its first draft. The date was her birthday. She has said no gift since has come close. Universal screening, reading coaches, teacher training, individual reading plans, parent notification, and a third-grade gate. Read SB 2347 →
Mississippi becomes the first state to retrain its entire K-3 teaching force in the science of reading through LETRS, 19,000 teachers over the next several years, with coaches in the highest-need schools. At the same time, universal screening begins and parents receive written notice of their child’s reading level and the third-grade requirement. Teachers and families learn the stakes together. All eight public universities align their teacher preparation to match.
Governor Bryant forms a task force to fix how future teachers learn to teach reading. Every early-literacy professor at the eight public universities is trained in the science of reading and passes the same assessment, and for the first time all eight use a common syllabus and textbooks. Executive Order 1380 →
Two years after the law, Mississippi is the only state in the nation to post significant gains in fourth-grade reading, before most children have had a fully retrained teacher.
Critics predicted 28 percent of third graders would be held back. The actual rate was about 8 percent, because the intervention system worked.
For the second time, Mississippi is the only state to post significant gains in fourth-grade reading. The national press begins to notice.
After the pandemic, reading scores fall in nearly every state. Mississippi holds its ground and keeps climbing in rank.
Ninth in the nation. Mississippi ranks 9th in fourth-grade reading, first in gains since 2013, and first when adjusted for demographics. More than forty states now follow its lead.
Unveiling the Mississippi Miracle by Governor Phil Bryant and Dr. Laurie Todd-Smith tells the whole account from the inside, and The Boy Behind the Mississippi Miracle tells it to the children who will grow up never knowing it was in doubt. The books →
The people who built the Mississippi Miracle gathered at the University of Mississippi with the leaders carrying it to other states. Photos and program →
