Lesson Learned: Mississippi’s Success in Public Education

AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, to another social ill, which is child illiteracy. And a glimmer of hope from one of America’s poorest states. Mississippi has a long track record of educational failure, but after a major reform initiative, kids there are showing significant progress in school, which New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, highlights in an article called “Mississippi is Offering Lessons for America on Education. Kymyona Burk helped implement reform when she was head of teaching and learning in Jackson. And they both spoke with Michel Martin about how Mississippi’s approach can work for children all over the world.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Nicholas Kristof, Kymyona Burk, thank you both so much for joining us.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF, OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Great to be with you.

KYMYONA BURK, SENIOR POLICY FELLOW, EXCELINED: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: Nick Kristof, I’m going to start with you. You’ve been reporting a series called “How America Heals,” and what you’ve been digging into, some of the more challenging issues that America faces, and that reporting took you to Mississippi where you have been examining games that they’ve made in literacy, especially for kids in the third-grade. So, what brought you to Mississippi and why did you — and what did you find there?

KRISTOF: I guess I see so many problems around the U.S. that have to do with education. And I don’t — you know, I think the best metric of where our society will be in 25 years is a state of K through 12 education today. And in the U.S., as a whole, that is deeply problematic. People kept telling me that I should go to Mississippi. And frankly, you know, I didn’t entirely believe it. You don’t normally think that you’re going to find solutions to social problems, in Mississippi of all places. But I went, and I was truly kind of blown away by what I found. And I do think that there are lessons in Mississippi for the rest of the country, having to do with making sure that kids learn how to read, learn how to do math, race high school graduation rates and really focus on improving education.

MARTIN: I mean, you start your piece by saying, the refrain across much of the Deep South for decades was, thank God for Mississippi. That’s because however abysmally Arkansas or Alabama might perform in national comparisons, they could still bet that they wouldn’t be the worst in America because that spot was often reserved for Mississippi. So, just to sort of give you, you know, some context about why people say that. What did you find in Mississippi that was so remarkable?

KRISTOF: So, Mississippi has dramatically improved fourth-grade reading and math results in particular. And that is true, you know, despite the fact that it hasn’t solved child poverty, it hasn’t solved racism. But, you know, in fourth — among — so, it’s gone from just about the bottom to about the middle of the country in fourth-grade scores. And if you look at children in poverty, which is an area where the U.S. does particularly poorly, Mississippi has done remarkably among low-income children, fourth-grade Mississippi kids now rank — or tied for best in the country in reading and second in math.

And I guess what strikes me is that, look, Mississippi hasn’t solved these broader social problems, still worse in the country on child poverty, but it has figured out how to get kids to read. And the rest of the country has to, you know, learn what we can from what Mississippi is doing.

MARTIN: Kymyona Burk, let me turn to you. You’re born and raised in Mississippi. When you were growing up, did you have a sense of the think that we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation that Mississippi wasn’t supposed to be a place where people excel academically, especially black kids?

BURK: Yes, of course. You know, and — I myself, I grew up in a low-income area. And, you know, I’m a public-school student, you know, throughout. So, yes, I was very well aware, as many of us were, you know, in the country that we were last, and that as long as there had been a ranking, Mississippi was last.

And I think that what is so remarkable about where we are now is that, you know, I always say, it had to become OK for Mississippi to be last and it had become OK in a sense to Mississippi.

MARTIN: What made it stopped being OK? What made it stopped being OK, and for people in Mississippi to say, that’s not good enough anymore?

BURK: Well, in 2013, our former governor, Phil Bryant, who was dyslexic, decided to have this huge education reform package, would not — which not only included literacy, it also included early learning collaboratives, which would be the state’s first investments in early childhood education and four-year-old education from the state. But then, also, we had an accountability model. So, we had several things going on with education reform. And, you know, I always say that we were at the point where I feel it was, we’re going to go big or go home. And this was our first state-led effort on just a major scale to reform education and to start with the most basic of things, which is a literacy and being able to read.

MARTIN: Nick, I’m going to go back to you on this. What was a thing that was the driver here?

KRISTOF: Well, it’s inner stage was maybe set in the early 2000s. But in 2013, indeed, is — it’s going to be on the set. There was this major legislative package that set the groundwork for early childhood programs, which Mississippi historically had been awful at, you know, in pre-K and getting kids, especially really needy kids, access to pre-K. And then, there was another, you know, key component, I think, where there was a real major effort to get every kid reading by the end of third-grade. And as part of that, there was a third-grade gate set up so that kids had to pass a reading test at the end of third-grade, or they would be held back. And there were a lot of reasons to be concerned about that, and whether that would, you know, hurt the morale of kids, whether that would disproportionately hurt low-income kids or kids of color. In fact, I think it created accountability. It made teachers, principals, families and kids themselves who care very about making sure they learn to read by the end of third-grade. You know, and then, test results began to improve. I think that made the legislature more inclined to increase early childhood programs. Last year, to pay teachers more. It created a virtuous cycle of investment. But there — you know, look, a lot of states talk about the importance of getting kids to read. What I saw in Mississippi was a just real determination.

They used tutoring to use sort of career development of faculty and skills development of faculty to make sure they were teaching a curriculum that really would work and would get kids to read. And all coupled with, I think, an administration to state level that made sure these goals were being implemented in every district in the state.

MARTIN: So, Kymyona, you became Mississippi’s literacy director beginning in 2013, and you talk about the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which is the gate, right? And I know it’s controversial because there’s been controversial everywhere that, you know, this has sort of come up for a discussion. And I’m just curious, as a person who has been a classroom teacher yourself, can you identify, you know, why you think that is so important?

BURK: Right. So, it’s extremely important, you know, any of the research that you read around that transition from learning to read to reading to learn shows that that transition from third-grade to fourth-grade is extremely important. There’s so much scaffolding that’s done between kindergarten and third-grade where students are learning to read, right? They’re learning all the foundational skills. Once they enter fourth-grade or when they enter fourth-grade, the text becomes a lot more complex. And for those students who do not have really a strong hold of those foundational skills it becomes extremely difficult for them to be able to transition and to be successful in those upper grades. So, it is important because, just historically or across the country, there really hasn’t been any accountability in kindergarten through second-grade. Our state of assessments begins in third-grade, right? So, even though we call this a third-grade gate or a read by three policies or any of the other terms that you may hear, this is not just a third-grade teacher’s responsibility, and I think that that’s the important lesson here, that when students enter kindergarten, we are supposed to ensure that we’re identifying those early who have or who may have reading difficulties and provide them with all of the support.

So, with our law, it allows for that. It allows for not just screening students but providing interventions. It allows for teachers to be trained in the science of reading so that they’ll know how to respond to students who have reading difficulties. So, there are all these supports. And so, we always talk about it as third-grade retention, as an intervention tool, but mostly, that entire time from kindergarten through third-grade is spent on — very intentionally on prevention, prevention of reading difficulty.

MARTIN: What about the — can you just hone me in on the science of reading part of it? Because one of the points that you also made is that, you know, everybody doesn’t know to teach reading. So, how did you, you know, persuade people that really focusing on research-based methods was the way to go?

BURK: Yes. Well, I think the first thing was that we had to create this common language for what it meant to teach reading, that’s why our professional development was so important. But as a state agency and as a state-led initiative we had to really prove ourselves. The state agency had always been seen as this auditing arm, like if the State Department comes to your building, to your classroom, you know, to your school, then you’ve done something wrong. So, we had to take the approach that we want kids reading by the end of third-grade, but we’re going to help you get there. So, I think a lot of what we did to get buy in was we put boots on the ground in the role of literacy coaches. We say, we’re here with you and we’re going to help in your schools to support you in those efforts.

MARTIN: So, look, I noticed that the comments on your piece were quite robust. Obviously, people — a lot of people were really interested in this subject but a lot of people were really skeptical, they said, well, you know, you — the — you know, the state benefited by an enormous financial commitment by a particularly committed philanthropist named James Barksdale and his family, OK? And a lot of people were like, well, shoot, you know, you give me $100 million, you know, we’ll get some results too. What do you say to that?

KRISTOF: So, overall — so, Jim Barksdale, the founder of Netscape, putting $100 million in the year 2000. If you look at how much states spend on education, you know, over the last 20 plus years, that $100 million did not account for all that much. Mississippi generally does not spend all that much on per people education. I do think that what Barksdale brought was real emphasis on accountability, on assessment, on rigor, on evidence, and he had influence in the state. I think it was as much that emphasis on rigor and evidence that help bring about the changes. But also, it wasn’t just Barksdale, I mean, it was essentially a state was willing to rethink how it did education. And there was — I mean, Kymyona would be able to speak to this better, but I think there was a certain amount of embarrassment in Mississippi and a willingness, as a result, to try new things and then to do its best to make sure that these newer approaches worked.

MARTIN: The question, I think, some people would have is, you know what, it’s great that Mississippi finally kind of woke up and took seriously its commitment to educate every child as opposed to, you know, the long history of allowing people to opt out of the educational systems because they didn’t want to integrate or not giving the same kinds of early childhood supports that other states have long since embraced, like universal, you know, pre-K, for example.

And I think what some people would look at this and they think, well, you know what, but what about child poverty? What about the maternal mortality rate? What about clean water in Jackson, for example? What do you — do you have thoughts about that?

KRISTOF: Well, those qualms are real. I mean, look, you know, Mississippi, you know, the highest child poverty rate in the country, that is a disgrace. Mississippi fails its children with a poverty rate like that. And, you know, absolutely, we should not give Mississippi a pass or Mississippi Republicans a pass for allowing those rates of child poverty for the racism that continues to be a problem around this state, for the degree of segregation and education there.

You know, on the other hand, around the country, we have an awful lot of school systems that fail kids, and we tend to say, well, too bad. We can’t really address these problems because there are so many kids living in poverty and you can’t really do much education for kids who are living in poverty. And Mississippi is the rebuttal for that argument, because Mississippi has shown that even if you don’t solve child poverty, even if you don’t solve racism, then you can still get kids reading by the end of third-grade. And so, I think it takes away the excuse for all the rest of us for our failures to teach education — to teach kids to read.

MARTIN: Kymyona Burk, can you talk a little bit more about how or whether you think these kinds of initiatives are transferable and scalable?

BURK: Yes. I think it’s — of course. I think it’s transferable because there are so many states now that are adopting these policies. But I want to make clear that it’s not just about a checklist, it’s not just about our checklist of things. I think that the one thing that was really advantageous to us is that there is a hub at our Department of Education, there is a literacy division that is devoted to overseeing the implementation of this law, that’s devoted to the guidance that it — that we give to school districts about how to implement that. You also have to make that investment in infrastructure, you know, at your Department of Education. This is not a one-woman or one-man job. There has to be a team that’s dedicate to that. And then, around the funding for it, you know, there’s nothing worse than an unfunded mandate. So, around the funding for it, this is not through our funding that’s appropriated per pupil, this is funding that is targeted and specifically used for the implementation of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act. It’s $15 million per year. There are some states are giving $50 million, you know, and those types of numbers. But for us, with our $15 million, it’s targeted to professional development. It’s not left up to school districts to decide our assessment system, other — our coaches, you know, other supports for teachers and students. So, this money is specifically for that. And for states that are saying that, we want to adopt these principles, they have to make sure they’re also adopting the — you know, making sure that there’s a budget for it. So, yes, it’s definitely doable. There are other states that are doing it, you know, like North Carolina, Colorado, Tennessee, there are other states who have adopted policies and are doing it as well.

MARTIN: Nick, you know what, it’s — you can’t help but notice that, you know, Mississippi is a very conservative state, a so-called red state. It seems that the majority of states that have passed of this kind of reading accountability laws or reading laws are Republican or red states. Do you have a theory about why that is?

KRISTOF: You know, as somebody who is a little more in the left, I frankly think that somehow my side of the ledger made a historic mistake and somehow, we became suspicious of fun acts (ph). And I think that that was, you know, partly because we were trying desperately to be very inclusive and to try new approaches and new things, and I think that then we became a little cemented in place and we were on the wrong side of that one and a little slow to wake up to new evidence about the science of reading and how it could improve outcomes.

MARTIN: So, Kymyona Burk, before we let you go, what are you proudest of?

BURK: Well, when you talk about our communities and how businesses have stepped in, there are communities in Mississippi that had never seen success before. And even when I say success, we know that we’re not where we need to be for all kids. We know that there are still a lot of room to grow. But when I say districts or schools that had some of the lowest numbers as it relates to proficiency, who are now seeing almost 100 percent of their kids ready and passing our third-grade gate, you can’t unsee that. So, now, that you know it’s possible, you know, as Nick said in the beginning, there’s just no excuse. So, I think that it makes me most proud that we were able to do it in Mississippi. And I do think that it had to be Mississippi, it had to be the state, the blackest, the poorest state in the nation to show the world that if you invest in people, if you invest in teachers and their knowledge and you support them that it doesn’t matter the income of the family, it doesn’t matter whether they are black or brown, that you can teach children how to read. And as it relates to the other ills in the state, I think that literacy is going to be our first step in eradicating those things and making sure that we are able to be productive members of our society and being able to participate in the political process and all of those things that we need to make our state better. And I just think that this is just the floor and I think this is just the beginning.

MARTIN: Nicholas Kristof, Kymyona Burk, thank you both so much for talking with us.

BURK: Thank you.

KRISTOF: Thank you.

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