Mississippi is doing something right, and Michigan is not.
The results speak for themselves.
“Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now,” Arjun Panickssery, researcher with ML Alignment & Theory Scholars, posted to X on Monday, referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The ‘Mississippi Miracle’ started in 2012 when the Republican governor/ legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test.”
Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now
The “Mississippi Miracle” started in 2012 when the Republican governor/legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test pic.twitter.com/BYtlXePzRd
— Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery) April 7, 2025
The post included a ranking of the average state scores on the NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, both “adjusted for demographics” and not.
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At the top is Mississippi, with an average adjusted score of 255. Far down the list, at number 40, is Michigan, with an average adjusted score of 239.
Panickssery noted the adjustment accounts “for gender, age, ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch status, special-education status, and English-language-learner status.”
“In contrast, Oregon, with the lowest demographic-adjusted scores, has a Board of Education that has indefinitely ‘paused’ since 2020 the use of any standardized tests as a graduation requirement,” he posted to X. “Most of this stuff isn’t rocket science.”
A breakdown of average scale NAEP scores for fourth-grade reading in 2024 shows Mississippi’s unadjusted score of 219 is now four points higher than the national average, while Michigan’s 209 score is five points below, the eighth worst among all states and the District of Columbia.
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The depressing data, first released in January, stems in part from learning loss during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic edicts that was exacerbated by a Democratic government trifecta that reduced instructional days and did away with student performance to evaluate teachers.
When Whitmer took office in 2019, Michigan’s average unadjusted score for fourth-grade reading was 219, the same as Mississippi.
Six years later, “75% of Michigan’s fourth graders and 76% of eighth graders are not reading at grade level,” state Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton, noted in a post to X when the scores were released in January.
“This is a crisis, and yet instead of raising the bar, Democrats have repealed key literacy policies, weakened teacher standards, and eliminated the A-F school grading scale – all while celebrating these decisions,” Theis wrote.
Democrats in the Michigan legislature blame the state’s education issues on the pandemic and “longstanding divestment,” ignoring the fact that reading scores were much better with smaller budgets before Democrats gained full control of government from 2022 through 2024.
“Student performance is a complex, nuanced issue — and unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that can immediately reverse the effects that longstanding disinvestment and a global public health emergency have had on our education system,” Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, said in a statement to The Detroit News.
But even Whitmer herself acknowledged the “hard truth” during her recent State of the State Address that the slide student learning goes well beyond the budget.
“I get that this is a national trend, but the reality is that we invest more per-pupil than most states and achieve bottom 10 results,” Whitmer said. “We spend more and we get less. It’s not acceptable.”
It’s evident in the NAEP scores, which showed fourth-grade reading declined by 2 points in Mississippi from 2019-22, while it was a 6-point loss in Michigan.
Michigan is now following Mississippi’s lead, working to implement the same type of phonics-based reading strategies that propelled The Magnolia State to the top 13 years ago.