The "Southern Surge" in educational achievement is causing heads to explode in liberal blue states. A decade ago, New England states, including Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine, were at or near the top of state achievement scores on standardized tests. Louisiana, Mississippi, and other red states were at the bottom.
But then the Southern states jettisoned the Bush-era "No Child Left Behind" mandates and returned to a phonics-based reading program and a back-to-basics math approach. The results were startling.
National Review reports that in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standardized tests, "just two states, Alabama and Louisiana, had math or reading scores higher than what they were in 2019, pre-COVID. " After the liberal Urban Institute adjusted NAEP results based on state demographics, "Mississippi fourth-graders topped the country in math and reading. Louisiana’s fourth-graders led the nation in reading growth for the past two NAEP cycles and rank fifth nationwide for math growth," according to National Review.
Are these kids just testing better because of the curriculum's structure, as some on the left argue? Not really. The test is based on what students have learned, and even poorly performing students are improving.
The Education Recovery Scorecard, a Harvard-Stanford research collaboration, tracks how well states are making up academic ground lost after 2019. The most recent results offer an eye-popping portrait of the Southern surge: Alabama was first in math recovery and third in reading recovery; Louisiana was second and first, Mississippi sixth and fourth, and Tennessee third and ninth. Chad Aldeman, a respected education analyst and old Obama hand, makes clear the extent of the “Mississippi miracle,” noting that Mississippi’s black students “rank third nationally, and its low-income kids outperform those in every other state.” Mississippi is the “only state to see gains across all performance levels over the last decade. Its average went up, but so did the scores of its highest and lowest performers.”
So why aren't blue states falling all over themselves to change the curriculum to something that more resembles what the Southern Surge has accomplished?
What? And admit that the teachers' unions, the liberal educational establishment, and blue city school boards have been wrong? They'd rather see their students fail than do that.
Meanwhile, blue states' achievement scores have been dropping like a rock since COVID.
No state fell as far in early reading over the last decade as Vermont. In 2022, Maine hit record lows in all four tests. Both states continued to decline from 2022 to 2024 even as other states started to recover. From 2015 to 2024, in each grade and subject, Massachusetts and its northern neighbors lost ground on the country as a whole.
Education experts often look at the Grade 4 reading exam as a critical milestone: Around that age, students must transition from learning to read to reading to learn. And that’s where the most alarming signs have emerged for New England. While Mississippi and Louisiana students surpassed the national average and posted their best scores on record last year, Vermont and Maine have plummeted. Since 2013, Grade 4 reading scores have declined by the equivalent of 1.5 grade levels in Maine and Vermont.
But leadership in New England has shown limited interest in truly confronting the region’s decline.
To their credit, Massachusetts appears to be trying more than other states to switch gears and embrace what made the Southern Surge possible. "But reforms have so far lacked the top-down oversight common to the Southern success stories," the Boston Globe reports.
New England may be the birthplace of public education, but if New Englanders are to maintain that birthright for their children and those less fortunate, they may have to set aside cherished local control, override the wishes of popular and powerful teachers unions, and, most of all, stop resting on their laurels.
Sound advice. But again, it would mean admitting that the billions of dollars spent on a failed educational system were wasted and that those in charge would have to be held accountable.
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