Links and Commentary 9/26/25

The Mississippi Miracle, Billionaire School Choice in Florida, Head Start Cuts, The Heaviness of Teaching, Teacher Voices

Author

James Shanahan
September 26, 2025

Welcome to Scholastic Alchemy! I’m James and I write mostly about education. I find it fascinating and at the same time maddening. Scholastic Alchemy is my attempt to make sense of and explain the perpetual oddities around education, as well as to share my thoughts on related topics. On Wednesdays I post a long-ish dive into a topic of my choosing. On Fridays I post some links I’ve encountered that week and some commentary about what I’m sharing. Scholastic Alchemy will remain free for the foreseeable future but if you like my work and want to support me, please consider a paid subscription. If you have objections to Substack as a platform, I maintain a parallel version using BeeHiiv and you can subscribe there.

The Mississippi Miracle

I don’t want to be one of those people who refuses to believe that southern states can do good things educationally. I am, after all, a southerner. The challenge for me is that I am aware of the recent history of “miracles” in southern states that turned out to be either temporary or fraudulent. “This time is different” or “you can trust me this time” is not a great selling point and inspires a kind of responsible skepticism that anyone who cares about the wellbeing and education of students should exhibit.

One thing you’ll notice about all three miracles, is that they all rely on big jumps in 4th grade NAEP reading scores. It’s always the 4th grade reading scores! The Mississippi Miracle is a miracle of 4th grade reading scores. The math scores are a bit less stellar but I think they’re also worth talking about.

Average NAEP Math Scores for 4th Grade comparing Mississippi and the National Average.

Being at/around/above the national average in math is very good for Mississippi given its history! 25 years ago, more than half of their 4th graders scored below basic. Yet for whatever reason, when talking about a miracle journalists and commentators do not talk about the math scores very much. I suspect this is because there’s a good story to be told about the reading scores. For one, reading the scores dramatically exceed the national average. Secondly, they allow people to mention the Science of Reading and chalk up Mississippi’s scores up to the SoR. Thirdly, they can call 3rd grade retention policies a success.

What is missing is the larger picture of what Mississippi did and how that probably also played a role in improving their math scores. I think it’s important that we acknowledge that it’s not just that Mississippi has a law requiring research-based reading curricula. It’s not just that Mississippi holds back third graders who fail their state reading tests. There are three pillars to their strategy:

  • First, the required curriculum was rigorously reviewed. They didn’t outsource it to, say, EdReports.

  • Second, Teachers were trained extensively on the new curriculum and then supported implementing effectively it with a system of coaches and professional development that aimed at keeping teachers fluent with both the curriculum and best pedagogical practices. This part is never mentioned in mainstream reports.

  • Third, is accountability. All kids are tested annually starting in 3rd grade. While retention of 3rd graders is often the focus of reports, there are also supports and consequences vertically through the schools and for parents. Every retained kid is entered into a specialized program to help them learn to read. Parents are encouraged to engage in their kids’ learning and progress, reply to teacher communications, etc. Schools and districts face consequences if too many kids are being retained and too few succeed after retention. Subsequent years of tests also carry the potential for support interventions and for consequences.

So, it’s kind of crazy to me that we don’t see more reporting on the overall formula Mississippi is using to achieve these 4th grade reading scores and we see almost zero information about what Mississippi did to improve their math scores.

Or, maybe we should take a cohort view? Well, the reading laws were passed in 2013. The first cohort of 4th graders taking the NAEP under these new laws would be the 2015 group. Let’s do a 4th/8th grade reading score comparisons and see what happens to these kids as they age through Mississippi’s miracle.

In 2015, 60% of Mississippi 4th graders performed at or above basic. 26% scored at or above proficient. Four years later, in 2019, that cohort of Mississippi students took the 8th grade NAEP. 67% of Mississippi 8th graders performed at or above basic. 25% scored at or above proficient. That’s pretty good! Unlike in Florida, Mississippi’s kids improved their reading proficiency over time by about 7%. Importantly, that growth mostly wasn’t proficient or advanced kids scoring basic four years later but was due to an 8% decrease in the number of kids scoring below basic.

We could do later cohorts but both the 2022 and 2024 scores have to be considered in light of the global score decline due to the pandemic. This is why cohort studies are also limited and we use same-grade comparators most of the time. I just wish that’s not all we did. And I just wish we would also talk about math scores. And I just wish we would talk about 8th grade and 12th grade, too. We don’t graduate 4th graders into the workforce (anymore) so their successes only matter insomuch as they continue through the entirety of their schooling.

Anyway, here’s my bottom line. I’m convinced that Mississippi is doing something well, but I’m bothered by the “miracle” branding because the actual results are good-but-not-great. Mississippi’s excellent 4th grade scores need to translate into excellent 8th grade and, ideally, excellent 12th grade scores too. Maybe they’re on that trajectory but they’re still in 41st place nationally for their 8th grade reading scores even though they’ve had these reading laws on the books for twelve years. Forty other states outperformed Mississippi’s 8th graders last year. If we’re going to be bombarded by calls to stop being educational snobs, then we deserve an honest accounting of everything a state like Mississippi is doing. Coverage of the “miracle” seems designed to do the opposite. It seems designed to tell us to shut up and accept a package of reforms that has shown some positive benefit but does not yet translate to national excellence. Moreover, the reforms actually undertaken are often not the reforms people are talking about the most, preferring instead to latch onto other hot topics like Knowledge-Building curriculum or the Science of Reading (both things I support!) when it’s clear that Mississippi is doing so much more than just those things.

To close, let’s note another thing. Mississippi’s ELA and Math scores on their state mandated tests (you know the ones they use to retain kids and hold schools accountable) have gone down for the first time after three years of growth. I have no idea what this means for the 2026 NAEP and I have some major problems with states’ testing apparatuses, but it sure doesn’t feel miraculous.

Charter Schools, Billionaire Style

If you guessed Florida, you win a prize. Yes, the home of almost every bad educational trend in the nation has decided that ultra-rich hedge fund billionaires should get tons of Floridians’ money to run charter schools.

There are some juicy bits.

The records also show that Success Academy wants an enormous infusion of taxpayer money — beyond the existing subsidies Florida already offers through the Schools of Hope program.

In a funding document sent to lawmakers and legislative staffers, Success Academy proposed roughly $50 million over the next few years to cover start-up costs for nine new schools in Florida — plus a perpetual bonus of as much as $5,000 a year for every student Success Academy serves.

I suppose DeSantis enjoyed that $12 million dollar donation they made. And here I am thinking charter schools were supposed to operate more cheaply on a per-student basis. Florida spends about $12,000 per pupil so tacking $5000 onto that amount is a huge increase. But here I am thinking that higher per-pupil spending doesn’t mean better outcomes? Not at Success Academy! No, the billionaires and I think success means spending an additional $5k per child.

This combination would enable Success to have the necessary policy certainty on funding that it would be able to execute its first four years of expansion and sustain its schools thereafter upon meeting the exceptional performance criteria.

Here’s by best guess as to why they need so much more money. We know from Arizona that their voucher program is cannibalizing high performing public and charter schools. My guess is that the charter sector is wary of expansion in states with broad-based vouchers, like Florida, because they think enough parents would rather use vouchers to pay for private school and they’d lose money just like the traditional public schools do. Heck, they won’t even have to pay rent!

What’s more, the bill forces school districts to let charter operators open up a School of Hope inside an existing traditional public school if the building is not at maximum capacity — while simultaneously forbidding the school district from charging the charter operator any rent.

Seems crazy to me! Success should compete in the educational marketplace just like any other school under a system of choice. Of course, it’s really not about choice, is it? It’s about using the power of the state to dole out favors for friends and donors.

Head Start Cuts

For years, the local Head Start program provided stability and care for her oldest son, and it now does the same for her two younger children, twin boys. Head Start was there for Laughlin and her family through tough transitions, including the end of a long relationship. She credits the free federally funded program, housed in a blue building on the edge of this manufacturing hub of 27,000, for allowing her to keep her job as a massage therapist while raising three kids.

“If we had to pay for child care, I would not be able to work,” Laughlin said. “There’s no way I could do it.”

I also learned that about half of the kids enrolled in Head Start live in rural communities as opposed to less than a quarter that live in urban cities.

“These are our future,” she said, gesturing at the preschoolers playing in her classroom. “We need to give them the strongest, best possible start, and that includes their health care, their access to care, their education.”

At this point all I can do is feel shitty and hope for the best. This is what America voted for and we’ll have to live with the ramifications for years.

The Broken Copier: The Heaviness of Teaching

I don’t usually link with minimal commentary but I have been listening to Broken Copier podcast a bit recently and think we should let teachers speak for themselves more often.

Teacher Voices

In Trouble in Censorville, public school teachers from states as far-flung as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington describe, in their own words, being threatened, stalked, doxxed, ostracized, smeared as “pedophiles” and “Marxists,” placed on leave, and fired for teaching historical truth and racial justice, supporting LGBTQ+ students and, in one case, for wearing “insufficiently” feminine attire. Their stories bring readers face-to-face with the human cost of these attacks, which range from social isolation to pent-up anger over institutional betrayal to the terrible toll on teachers’ mental and physical health.

And yet, teachers are fighting back. They’re mobilizing colleagues, parents, and community members who share their faith in the freedom to read, the freedom to think critically, the freedom to challenge small-minded provincialism. Their stories of frontline resistance, collected here, provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.

Their gripping testimonials are enhanced by a timeline that situates today’s far-right war on public education in the context of American history, moving briskly from Reconstruction to the anti-left and anti-gay fearmongering of the McCarthy era to the Black Lives Matter movement to the Trump presidency.

Terrifying, infuriating, and inspiring, Trouble in Censorville sounds the alarm for a democracy on fire.

It’s going on my reading list.

Thanks for reading!