[…]
How could Mississippi, with its low education spending and high child poverty, pull it off?
It did not do so by relying on some of the most common proposals held up as solutions in education, like reducing class sizes, or dramatically boosting per-student funding.
Rather, the state pushed through a vast list of other changes from the top down, including changing the way reading is taught, in an approach known as the science of reading, but also embracing contentious school accountability policies other states have backed away from.
“Science of reading is really important — it was a key piece of what we did,” said Rachel Canter, the longtime leader of Mississippi First, an education reform group, who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left Washington think tank. “But people are missing the forest for the trees if they are only looking at that.”
[…]
