Phonics, Phonics, Phonics: The Mississippi Miracle

Phonics, Phonics, Phonics: The Mississippi Miracle

Years ago I went to the superintendent of public schools here in Knoxville. A local philanthropist had shown me the remarkable improvement in reading proficiency of second graders using a method called Direct Instruction. That method utilizes phonics and its computer-based instruction is called Funnix. The philanthropist wanted to fund the use of Direct Instruction in the poorest performing schools in the system and had literally guaranteed that within three years, those schools would become the highest performing schools. One of my acquaintances told me that the method would never be adopted because there was no way that they would allow three mostly poor black schools to out perform the mostly white schools. I was naïve. I thought that once the parents at other schools saw the performance in the poor schools, they would demand a change in method because even the best performing schools in Knoxville have embarrassingly poor reading scores.

The superintendent knew about the results from using phonics yet rejected the proposal using the excuse that the state accreditation board would not allow the reading program because it contained too much reading. Instead, under pressure from the county mayor, he allowed me and several retirees to tutor difficult second grade learners in an afterschool program. At the end of the school year all our kids could read anything you put in front of them. Our reward was that we were not asked back. I am convinced that neither the superintendent nor the local school board have any interest in teaching our kids how to read.

In 2011 only one in five Mississippi fourth graders could read at grade level. The state ranked consistently at the bottom of all states. Remember the saying “Thank goodness for Mississippi?” Well that has changed. In 2013 the state adopted a reading program based on phonics and today when adjusted for socio-economic factors, Mississippi’s fourth graders have the nation’s best reading results. You see it is rather simple. We all know that our public schools are a model of how not to educate our children. They have been pushed by their unions to be more interested in social grooming than in the education basics or reading, writing and arithmetic. Our students do not know civics or geography. But they do know that there are at least 72 genders. in Minneapolis, high schoolers are required to take lessons saying that capitalism is a pillar of white supremacy alongside slavery and genocide. Mind you the system is run by white people who obviously hate themselves. Go figure. We graduate illiterates. If education were a private enterprise it would long be out of business. But this is a result of a government monopoly where failure is rewarded rather than punished. We need a return to the basics and teach reading, writing and arithmetic. All else is garbage. There is a curriculum in Washington state that says that “mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture” and that “math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.” Do you want these fools teaching your children?

The problem lies in the method of instruction. Direct Instruction is the only proven method that allows kids who come to school deficient in reading and mathematics to catch up with those who are proficient. This is an important point for conservatives have been strong advocates for charter schools and vouchers. Yet neither will increase proficiency of the vast majority of students who are deficient. Consider that in Knoxville, the charter schools are part of the public school system and are limited in the innovation of teaching method. The education industrial complex is solidly against Direct Instruction and only if states step up and insist on a change in method, like Mississippi, can all children learn to read at or above grade level. Today more than half of black fourth graders in Mississippi read at grade level compared to 28 percent in California. Tennessee has made some strides in addressing this problem too with mixed results. What needs to be done is for the state to force the change on the school systems, teachers’ unions and change the accreditation standards.

Mind you there will always be defenders of the old method of instruction. There will be those who nitpick the Mississippi statistics. For instance, Mississippi schools like many across the country have a problem with chronic absenteeism. Nearly a quarter of public school students are absent at any time. Consequently, it is doubtful that those students were tested for proficiency. The state needs to address the problem of truancy. Nonetheless, those students who were tested showed tremendous improvement. But chronic absenteeism is not just a problem in Mississippi, post-pandemic nationwide fully a quarter of students are absent from school. These students are the ones responsible for missing instructional time and the major source of the dismal reading scores, nationwide.

It should be noted that many of the charter schools that have shown progress have been able to innovate in teaching method. Again I have written on education innovation and will not repeat that here. See my essay Robert Woodson’s “Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers” entitled “Bring back the Rosenwald Schools” in which I advocate setting up a school system completely separate from the current ones. I say “Children are smart and can be taught. They are stuck in failing schools using a failed method of instruction…It is time to recognize that the education of our children is too important to be left to the government.”

The chart below shows the reading proficiency for Knoxville schools. The vertical axis is third grade reading proficiency. The horizontal axis is percent children on free lunch programs. First, you don’t want to be below the line which is the statewide average. Most of the Knoxville schools are below the line. The highest performing school is in a wealthy area has proficiency of 83 percent. Eight percent of its students are on free lunches. The outlier is a school with 44 percent on free lunches but a reading proficiency of 80 percent. What is disheartening is that the school superintendent has not and apparently is not interested in finding out what works at that school which uses the failed method and imposing it on the rest of the schools. Still, the school with 83 percent proficiency means that 17 percent do not read a grade level. Under Direct Instruction, virtually all students will be proficient unless they have a learning disability.

As one educator said “We know how to teach reading,” she said. “We just have to do it.” Mississippi, for one, holds students back in third grade if they cannot pass a reading test but gives them multiple chances to pass after intensive tutoring and summer literacy camps. The state requires every K-3 teacher, elementary principal and assistant principal to take a 55-hour training course in the science of reading. “We have to break that cycle of generational poverty. One of the best ways to do that is to make multiple generations of readers.” One teacher said that in college she didn’t learn a thing about teaching kids to read. One wonders what do they teach in our colleges of “education?” 

Moreover, I have long advocated that colleges of “education” should not offer undergraduate degrees. Potential teachers should have real majors such as business, mathematics and language. Then in order to be certified they should get that certification from graduate programs offered in the college of “education”. However, it is noteworthy to question the value of certification. University professors need only the requisite degrees and not any other certification that supposedly teaches them how to teach raising the question of the value of certifications period.