Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated—it’s venerated.
Mississippi is probably the top target. I don’t have to tell you why. You know about the poor health outcomes. The poverty. The corruption. The obesity. The confederacy stuff.
Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” because its horrible performance on so many metrics saves other states the embarrassment of finishing last. The term has been used since at least 1945.
This reputation has made it awkward in recent years as Mississippi has become the fastest improving school system in the country.
You read that right. Mississippi is taking names.
In 2003, only the District of Columbia had more 4th graders in the lowest achievement level on our national reading test (NAEP) than Mississippi. By 2024, only four states had fewer.
(And no shade to D.C. It has reduced its share of low performing readers even more than Mississippi since 2002 and has a strong claim to being the most improved jurisdiction over that time. It was the classic example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of higher standards for schools. More on the politics later.)
When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results for student demographics (i.e. gender, age, and race or ethnicity; qualification status for free and reduced-price lunch, special education, and English language learner), this is where Mississippi ranked:
- 4th grade math: 1st
- 4th grade reading: 1st
- 8th grade math: 1st
- 8th grade reading: 4th
How about Black students? The root of Mississippi’s bad reputation is its historically awful record on civil rights—including its refusal to integrate schools.
That was then.
Now, it has a different story to tell. Black students in Mississippi posted the third highest 4th grade reading scores in the nation. They walloped their counterparts in better-funded states. The average Black student in Mississippi performed about 1.5 grade levels ahead of the average Black student in Wisconsin. Just think about that for a moment. Wisconsin spends about 35 percent more per pupil to achieve worse results.
Mississippi is not the only southern star. Louisiana was the only state to fully erase pandemic learning loss among 4th grade readers. It ranked in the top five for all four NAEP grades/subjects in the demographically adjusted results. Alabama was the only state whose 4th graders beat their pre-Covid performance in math. In years past, notable gains have been posted by Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.
These successes have not been wholly unacknowledged. They have been dutifully and perfunctorily name-checked in news stories. Nonetheless, there has been, shall we say, a reluctance among national voices to extol Deep South examples as worthy of emulation by their so-called “better off” peers. (There are exceptions, of course. Vince Bielski recently wrote a detailed piece for RealClearInvestigations.)
You can’t go around saying Maine ought to visit Mississippi to learn how to teach reading. It’s insulting. You could ruin a cocktail party. After all, Maine has Kennebunkport. Mississippi has Biloxi.
But that’s exactly what should happen. Below are the reading scores for these two states over time. For context, 10 points on NAEP is approximately the equivalent of one grade level. In 2002, students in Mississippi were two years behind students in Maine. Today, they are about a year ahead.
Don’t you want to know how that happened? Me too.
