This year, statewide proficiency scores in English increased for a third consecutive year since the pandemic. While there may be a miraculous quality to the progress being made, educators will tell you that there is nothing supernatural about the improvements. 

Here’s what educators and administrators in the state‘s top districts for English proficiency say fuels improvements.

Emphasis on K-3 learning 

Mississippi has completed 10 school years with the “third grade gate” in place. The most recent third grade English Language Arts  proficiency results, released on Aug. 15 show 57.7% of students scoring proficient or advanced. In 2016, that number was 32.1%.

The work doesn’t start in third grade — the K-3 window has become a focal point for educators, a critical time when kids are expected to move from recognition of sounds and symbols to effective reading and comprehension.

In the Rankin County School District, emphasis on phonics has led to improvements. All K-3 teachers in the RCSD are trained in Phonics First.

“We found that our students’ ability to write and think had been hindered,” said Melissa McCray, director of elementary curriculum, instruction and professional development for the district. “We had to go back and clean up all of those foundational pieces. We’ve done that, and we’ve seen really good gains in our lower grade students, as well as in our upper grades.” 

For the past three school years, RCSD has exceeded pre-pandemic performance levels, with 87.8% of third graders in 2024 passing the third grade reading assessment.

Kelleigh Broussard is assistant superintendent and executive director of curriculum and instruction for Long Beach School District, where the same improvements can be observed. She emphasized the importance of helping students build a strong foundation early. 

“This all comes down to students being able to read, and read well,” she said. “And this is not an endeavor that unfolds in high school. I mean, ultimately, the end of course assessment in English II should be the culmination of 10 years of education in the public school setting.”

The Literacy Based Promotions Act, passed in 2013 and amended in 2016, set out guidelines meant to improve the way students were taught in grades K-3, grounded in the science of reading, through structured literacy — changes Broussard, a longtime educator, believes the entire state will benefit from in the long run. 

Retaining and Supporting Teachers 

The majority of school districts in Mississippi are facing critical teacher shortages — in Mississippi and across the country, teachers are hard to find and hard to keep. 

“The teacher shortage is real. We have many open positions, even now with school starting tomorrow,” Jenny Webber, instructional specialist and testing coordinator for Harrison County School District, said in a July 31 interview. “But in Harrison County, we support our teachers in everything we do.”

Support looks different from district to district, but all agree it is an essential part of attracting and retaining teachers. Many districts foster a symbiosis between new teachers and experienced ones, where experienced teachers, formally or otherwise, are invited to share their expertise with newer teachers.

Financial incentives also go a long way. Oxford School District, for example, pays teachers $3,000 for being National Board Certified, on top of the $6,000 the state offers teachers with those credentials. 

According to the Learning Policy Institute, teaching experience is, on average, positively associated with student achievement gains. 

“If I’m an experienced teacher, I’m better able to predict the rhythms of the school year and know how to navigate those a little better,” said Andy Scoggin, superintendent for the Clinton Public School District, which is consistently among the best schools in the state for ELA performance. “Not only have I had some experience with curriculum and instruction and assessment, but I’m also better able to predict the ups and downs.”

Though the contributing factors are nuanced, Mississippi’s best performing districts tend have a high percentage of experienced teachers. 

Data-Informed Decision Making

From the district level to the classroom level, there is a robust amount of student data available that educators use to track both student and institutional progress. 

“Our schools are taking the data of their incoming students and saying, ‘All right. This is where they are, here’s where we need them to be.  What are the things we’re going to put in place to make sure they’re successful?’” Schoggin said. 

According to Schoggin and Tamika Billings, the district’s first director of student assessment and student services, teachers in the district participate in professional learning communities outside of regular school hours, to review student data and collaboratively develop plans for improvement. As the data changes and the students progress, needs shift and so do the strategies. 

“Just like a doctor will give everyone a different prescription, you have to be able to prescribe your students differently because they learn differently. And a lot of our teachers do that. And that is the proof in the pudding,” Billings said. 

Calculated use of this data can go a long way in improving both instruction and student outcomes, according to educators. This information is also essential in helping districts identify and address inequities. 

Rankin County School District’s switch from balanced literacy to structured literacy was informed, in part, by data showing that not all students’ needs were being met. Though both are theories about how to teach kids to read, experts say balanced literacy works for some kids and structured literacy, while necessary for some students, works for all kids. 

“We did over 20 years of balanced literacy in our district and had success, but knew we were not really getting all of our students and not targeting all of their needs,” Angy Graham, RCSD executive director of academics. “If we looked at some of our subgroup data, we were missing some (kids) and that’s not right. That’s not what we’re in the business of doing. We need to educate all of our students.”

Redefining ready

What does it mean to be ready? 

One way that school districts are improving student outcomes is through re-evaluating what it means for kids to be prepared. In many cases, this looks like building a students’ world knowledge — giving them context that not only helps them on state tests, but in life. 

“Prior to this body of work, I thought I understood what that meant. But we’ve had to really dig in and understand what it means to bring world knowledge — we’ve got kids in our own communities who have never left McLaurin,” said Graham. 

Jessica Hodges, who is also on the RCSD curriculum staff, recalled taking a group of middle schoolers to a restaurant and teaching one student how to order. 

“That was eye opening to me, to see your child look at me and say, ‘I don’t know what to do. What do I do in a restaurant?’ I think that was a changing point for me,” Hodges said.

The Oxford School District has kicked this notion into high gear, developing its own accountability model, Redefining Ready: Pre-K to Professional, that educators in the district track from elementary school all the way to graduation. 

The model includes indicators, which if fulfilled, let elementary, middle and high school age students know they’re on the way to being academically ready, career ready and life ready. For example, high school students are encouraged to meet citizenship indicators like registering to vote and completing personal financial literacy coursework to progress toward being life ready. 

“As educators in school districts in Mississippi, if our end goal is to only get them across the stage and to graduate, or pass and be proficient on the state assessment, then our vision is short-sighted for our children in our state,” Roberson said.

Leveling the playing field

Even as overall proficiency rates improve, achievement gaps and inequities persist at all levels, across all districts. 

Research seems to suggest that addressing achievement gaps early can go a long way. A big part of the state’s work to address this issue is Early Learning Collaboratives, or programs that give students access to state-funded Pre-K. There are 37 ELCs statewide.

“Across demographic lines, students who come from any home in which there is not an exposure to robust vocabulary or reading at home are going to enter school with fewer words in their word bank. So, what we’re doing is honing in on early intervention,” said Long Beach’s Broussard.

The Long Beach School District works in conjunction with the local Head Start program to find and identify students who may benefit from starting school as early as possible. 

“A lot of kids don’t have access to Pre-K or daycare because of being impoverished. But when you have something such as an ELC or if you partner with Head Start, you’re making more and more seats available to students who would otherwise not be able to be in the Pre-K setting. As each year goes by, the goal is to expand that opportunity to more and more students,” Broussard said. 

In the Harrison County School District, teachers often find themselves going the extra mile — literally — to ensure that students are getting the support that they need. 

“Some of our campuses offer after-school tutoring. We have some students who live far away from the campuses, so their parents can’t get them there. So, we’ve had some campuses go to neighborhoods to provide after-school tutoring,” Webber said. “The teachers drive to community centers and provide tutoring there.”

In some cases, educators described addressing inequity in ways that go beyond the textbooks, like providing kids with clean clothes and meals.

“I had someone tell me many many years ago that public education, when implemented with fidelity, was the greatest of social equalizers. And I believe that wholeheartedly,” Broussard said. “That’s how we’re going to disrupt perpetuation of generational poverty. That’s how we change that — it’s through education. And we all need to get swimming in the same direction.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.