When Mississippi reformed its reading curriculum in 2013, ratings for the state’s elementary school students soared. Motivated by the” Mississippi wonder,”other Southern states did the same. But the miracle has hit a wall: intermediate school.
Outcomes on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal that Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have actually seen significant improvements in 4th grade reading over the past years, however far smaller sized gains in eighth grade. (Graphs at the bottom of this story.)
Mississippi blazed a trail by retraining instructors in the science of reading– which highlights phonics and other basic literacy abilities– and sending out coaches into schools. The state’s 4th graders went from near the bottom nationally to surpassing the nationwide average in 2024. Lots of called it the “Mississippi wonder.”
“Mississippi moved a mountain in 4th grade,” stated Dan McGrath, a retired federal education official who managed the NAEP evaluations. High- and low-achieving trainees both made gains. However when these fourth graders reached eighth grade, their progress stalled. By 2019, more eighth graders were scoring at the bottom than in 2013. Ratings dipped even more during the pandemic, and by 2024, only greater attaining 8th graders recuperated a bit.
“When should we see the Mississippi miracle reach eighth grade? Why haven’t we seen it yet?” McGrath asked.
Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee started reforms later and may need more time. But McGrath’s concern remains.
Related: Checking out comprehension loses out in the class
Scientists and literacy advocates point to a typical answer: Early reading reforms focused on phonics, which helped trainees translate words, but translating alone is insufficient for competent intermediate school reading, where the words are longer and the sentences are more complicated.
Timothy Shanahan, a seasoned reading researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said reading instruction must continue after trainees learn to read. “It’s not phonics precisely,” he said. Teachers require to break down multisyllabic words, teach word roots and odd spellings, and discover time to read extensively to develop fluency with complicated texts.
Shanahan thinks schools need to teach students how to check out grade-level texts, even if they are difficult, and provide guidance on vocabulary, syntax and sentence structure.
The research evidence is in some cases dirty on precisely how to assist older students with reading understanding. There’s extensive contract that background understanding, vocabulary and comprehension strategies are all important. However specialists and advocates disagree about their relative significance and how much time to spend on them.
Lots of literacy advocates argue for more emphasis on background understanding due to the fact that it’s hard to comprehend an unknown topic. For example, even if I had a glossary of words, a technical medical post involving hereditary analysis would be lost on me. Researchers also say that numerous low-income kids aren’t exposed to as much art, travel and political news at home as wealthier kids, which indicates that numerous topics that come up in books are less familiar and more difficult to take in.
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Some research has shown promising literacy enhancements from developing children’s understanding. Harvard scientists discovered some success with specifically designed social studies and science lessons (not checking out lessons). However a 2024 meta-analysis didn’t find short-term reading benefits 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 development is difficult for researchers to track.
“There is no concern that knowledge plays a role in understanding,” said Shanahan. “But it has been tough to discover how such knowledge could generalize. In other words, 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 debate about the value of drilling students in checking out comprehension concerns, the kinds that are likely to come up on standardized tests, such as determining an author’s main point.
Carl Hendrick, a popular supporter of clearly teaching kids background understanding and vocabulary and a professor at Academica University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, agrees that a percentage of method guideline can be practical, such as having trainees practice writing a summary after reading something. However Hendrick concludes from the research study literature that there are diminishing go back to strategy direction after 10 hours of it. “When a student can not grasp the essence of a passage, the problem is nearly never that they lack a ‘strategy,'” Hendrick wrote in a March 2026 newsletter. “The issue is that they do not understand enough of the words.”
Too much screen time might likewise be a factor. “Kids aren’t reading as much anymore,” stated Sarah Webb, a senior director at Great Minds, a curriculum maker. Mobile phones and video games have actually changed books. And the less time that kids practice reading, the less chance they have to improve at it. A March 2026 Scholastic white paper, “Students Read Less and Losing Stamina: Why Continual Checking Out Matters More Than Ever,” highlights the growing decline in reading amongst preteens and teens.
Meanwhile, the growing space in between 4th and 8th grade reading ratings in the South is triggering teachers to question the assumption that middle schoolers currently know how to read, Webb said.
“They used to say the progression in school was you discover to read and then you check out to discover,” Webb said. “Now individuals understand it needs to be both for much longer. ‘Checking out to learn’ must begin earlier, and ‘discovering to check out’ should continue well past third grade.”
Contact staffauthor 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 not-for-profit, independent wire service that covers education. Sign up for Evidence Pointsand other Hechinger newsletters.
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