On Literacy, Time to Learn From Louisiana & Mississippi

Twenty years ago, saying that Louisiana and Mississippi had something to teach Massachusetts about education would have given rise to laughter. Well, it’s no longer a laughing matter.

After years during which Massachusetts was celebrated as a national leader in education, we have come into hard times. Our performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was nation-leading until 2013, at which point the impacts of the adoption of Common Core, the watering down of our state tests and the dissolution of the state’s school audit office began to register. We have been in full retreat since, experiencing significant declines in reading and math—to the point where Massachusetts’ performance on NAEP is not materially different from 2003.

We gave it all back—except for the tens of billions of dollars.

Our decline in reading literacy is especially troubling because we cannot seem to get the adults in the system to agree that the science of early grade literacy matters. While states like Mississippi and Louisiana have implemented comprehensive, scientifically grounded reforms in reading instruction—with clear, measurable gains—Massachusetts continues to fall behind, lacking both urgency and alignment with what decades of reading science have shown works.

Mississippi’s journey began in 2013 with the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which requires early screening of K–3 students, structured phonics instruction, the deployment of trained reading coaches, and the retention of third-grade students who don’t meet reading benchmarks. In the years that followed, Mississippi invested in training thousands of teachers in phonemic awareness, decoding, and fluency instruction. The results were stunning. Between 2013 and 2019, Mississippi posted the largest gains in fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of any state in the country, a shift so dramatic that it’s now referred to as the “Mississippi Miracle”.

Louisiana followed suit in 2019 with the passage of Act 108, which required all districts to adopt high-quality, phonics-based literacy materials. The state implemented literacy-focused training for all K–3 teachers and mandated early reading screening for all young students. Louisiana also added regional and school-based literacy coaches and prioritized high-dosage tutoring. These steps are now paying off: by 2023, Louisiana was one of only a handful of states to show K–3 reading recovery after the pandemic.

In Massachusetts, we have yet to enact any law requiring districts to teach foundational reading skills using scientifically grounded methods. Our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education offers guidance on screening but does not mandate it. There is no requirement that teacher preparation programs align with the five components of effective reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Districts are free to choose their own curricula, even if they are unaligned with the evidence base. And while Massachusetts students still outperform national averages overall, our achievement gaps have grown, and our early literacy trends have stalled. In fact, we’re now one of the only states without a science of reading law, even as more than 30 states have passed legislation grounded in this growing consensus.

The table below summarizes where we have fallen behind Louisiana and Mississippi.

Policy Element	Louisiana	Mississippi	Massachusetts
Statewide literacy law	Yes – Act 108	Yes – Literacy-Based Promotion Act	No
Third-grade reading retention policy	Yes – required starting 2025	Yes – since 2015	No
Teacher prep aligned to science of reading	Yes – required literacy course updates	Yes – state-mandated coursework	No – limited inclusion, no mandate
Phonics-based curriculum requirement	Yes – state-reviewed and required	Yes – state-approved materials required	No – district choice with minimal state guidance
State-funded literacy coaches	Yes – regional and school-level coaches funded	Yes – deployed to high-need districts	Yes – not required or widely deployed but started by Healey administration
Early screening for reading deficits	Yes – K–3 universal screening mandated	Yes – K–3 universal screening	Inconsistent across districts
Summer reading intervention	Yes – required for retained students	Yes – available to struggling readers	Not mandated
High-dosage tutoring or Tier 2 support	Yes – targeted tutoring as part of implementation	Yes – required intervention plans for struggling students	Limited – varies by district
Public reporting of reading progress	Yes – literacy dashboards and public updates	Yes – state-level and school reports	No – no uniform state-level literacy reporting
Significant reading gains	Yes – post-pandemic NAEP gains in K–3	Yes – ranked #1 in 4th-grade NAEP gains (2013–19)	No – recent declines in early literacy benchmarks

 

How to explain Massachusetts’ complacency? We got drunk with our own success and seem to have forgotten that, since the middle of the 2010s, no other states care what Massachusetts is doing in education.

Louisiana and Mississippi and most other states that are taking action on literacy have fewer resources than Massachusetts. But as anyone knows, good choices are more important than money. Dozens of states have implemented smarter, more focused, and more accountable literacy systems—and they are delivering better results for kids.

In Massachusetts, making progress in education has never been easy. A lot of adults have different interests—so it’s well known that it takes time and it takes a fight. The problem we are facing is not a new one—a lot of adults in the system no longer care about facts, the science of learning or closing achievement gaps.

It’s time to learn from Louisiana and Mississippi.