For much of the 20th century, blue-state schools were the gold standard in student achievement, consistently outperforming red-state schools in test scores and other key metrics.
The last two decades have seen red-state schools gain and even surpass blue-state schools in scholastic achievement scores. It should be stressed that this has little to do with the misguided pandemic school closures, although both red and blue states suffered as a result.
The gains that red-state schools made are due to an entirely different educational philosophy that has "implemented evidence-based reading curricula, banned ineffective teaching methods, and improved school safety," according to City Journal's Neetu Arnold.
Arnold writes of the single most important issue dividing red and blue states: the push for "equity." The practical effect of putting achieving "equity" above academic achievement has been the elimination of honors programs in blue-state schools, as well as lowering grading standards, and loosening classroom discipline. Meanwhile, red states have avoided this ideological approach and stuck with what works. The results have been nothing short of astonishing.
Reading has always been the rock upon which a child's education is built. It is fundamental to a child's scholastic success. In the 1960s and '70s, school districts abandoned the teaching of phonics, substituting a “holistic” process of "immersion in literature" and “sight reading.”
Even though this approach was exposed as a failure as early as the 1950s, when Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read warned of its ineffectiveness and championed phonics, the educational establishment stuck with the whole-language approach throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Phonics was and is seen today as "racist" by many progressive schools. Apparently, the biggest reason is that some of the reading aids for children are outdated, showing horrific images of women in the kitchen cooking for their husbands. Whatever.
I learned to read in the 1950s and clearly remember Sister Mary Whoever telling me when I came to an unfamiliar word to "sound it out" using the few, simple phonics rules in the phonics workbook. I have always been unable to understand why this approach to learning how to read was abandoned. I finally concluded that the revolution in reading instruction occurred during a time when most of society's norms were being challenged or upended, not because they were useless or wrong, but because revolution was in the air and "change" was seen as "necessary."
In 2013, Mississippi, under unified Republican leadership in both the legislature and governor’s mansion, was an early adopter of requiring that teachers be trained in evidence-based reading pedagogies. At the time, Mississippi rated second to last in reading scores nationally. But since then, the Magnolia State has steadily climbed the rankings. In fact, adjusted for demographics, it now stands among the top states in reading.
Red states have also led bans on the “three-cueing system” (or “MSV cueing”), another failed reading strategy that encourages students to guess unfamiliar words by using meaning, structure, or visual cues. Arkansas outlawed MSV cueing in 2021, followed by Louisiana in 2022. More states joined them after the release of Sold a Story, an influential podcast that exposed the harm done by these discredited methods.
Blue states are continuing their downward spiral, unable to escape the ideological pull toward disaster.
Meantime, blue states and districts are lowering the bar for students in both academics and discipline. In 2021, Oregon eliminated high school graduation standards because they were allegedly harmful to minorities. San Francisco and other progressive districts have tried to implement “equitable grading” policies that deemphasize tests and deadlines. California has made it harder for teachers to maintain order in classrooms. In 2014, it became the first state to ban suspensions and expulsions for “willful defiance” among K-3 students, citing the large racial disparities in infraction rates. A decade later, California expanded this policy to middle and high school students. These kinds of policy decisions from blue states—shaped by a strong pressure to conform to rigid equity dogmas—have become a serious liability.
While blue states like Oregon and Washington experienced significant drops in reading and math scores between 2015 and 2024, red states made huge strides.
"Mississippi, meantime, gained five points in fourth-grade reading and math and held steady in eighth-grade performance. Louisiana also maintained its scores, defying the negative national trends."
Some education analysts are calling it the "Mississippi Miracle" since a decade ago, Mississippi ranked 49th in reading scores.. Today, despite being the poorest state in the nation, spending less on education than all but three other states, a remarkable turnaround has occurred.
"Its Black students rank third nationally, and its low-income kids outperform those in every other state," reports "The 74."
There is no magic formula to boost student achievement levels. It's just that blue states refuse reform measures that would turn their failing schools around. It's not going to change until parents start voting with their feet and take kids out of the failed schools and either homeschool them or find a way to send their children to better schools.
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