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Mississippi, once ranked near the bottom of the country for reading, redesigned its approach(opens in new tab) to literacy instruction a decade ago — putting phonics at the center of how its youngest students are taught — and saw fourth-grade proficiency surge from 49th in the nation in 2013 to ninth in 2024. San Francisco’s reformers had that example in mind.
But to date, the district’s efforts have largely failed. Literacy rates actually slid backward from 2022, when the targets were set.
To understand why SFUSD may be falling short, we spoke with Rachel Canter, who heads education policy at the Progressive Policy Institute and previously led Mississippi First, a nonprofit that advocated for changes to that state’s education policy.
She argues that Mississippi’s success went far beyond curriculum changes — accountability for schools and districts was key. That largely hasn’t been the case in California, where a strict statewide mandate(opens in new tab) on phonics instruction was watered down after opposition from teachers unions.
Canter, who recently published a study on why other states have yet to achieve Mississippi’s results, reviewed SFUSD’s progress report.
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