Saturday, November 7, 2026

Message for Governor-Elect Klobuchar: Mississippi Demonstrates that Statewide Bold Systemic Education Reform Really Works

Minnesota now has a governor-elect who has the toughness, the intellect, and legislative support to begin the hard work necessary to reform our public education system so that it works for students of color, lower income students and English language learners and, indeed all students. In our last post, we described Minnesota's anemic and powerless system for supporting struggling schools. It rests on radical local control, voluntary acceptance of help through the COMPASS network, and almost no measurement of whether that help works. The evidence that it works is thin. We wrote that of the 30 schools MDE once held up as success stories, most have since lost the gains that let them leave the state's improvement list.

In this post, we suggest that we can learn from what other states have tried. Massachusetts, Tennessee, Mississippi, California and others have tried efforts to transform individual failing schools and district. This post looks briefly at those attempts to force change in selected districts, but without statewide transformation. We argue that these efforts did not succeed, in part, because they failed to transform the entire state system. We then look at length at Mississippi, the one state that rebuilt its whole system, taking the long view, and stayed with it long enough to see results. The message to the DFL trifecta and its new leader Governor-elect Klobuchar is that genuine bold reform must occur at every level systemically. A receivership of one school is not systemic change. The entire governmental structure, MDE's leadership vision, teacher training institutions, non governmental organizations, and even organized labor, must unite around comprehensive thoughtful coordinated reform.

To illustrate this point, let's look at some efforts to target a single school or district, without state wide systemic reform.

Single school restructuring, few lasting results

Over the past fifteen years, states and districts have pulled nearly every major lever short of statewide systemic reform: state receivership of a single district, partnerships with teachers' unions in a single district, replacing staff, in a single school, longer school days in a single school, and large federal turnaround grants. A few examples:

  • Lawrence, Massachusetts (placed under state receivership, 2011). Math scores rose substantially within two years; reading barely moved. Proficiency rates remain low compared to statewide averages. For instance, roughly 17% of students in grades 3–8 met or exceeded expectations in English Language Arts (compared to a 40% state average), with math scores at similar levels.
  • Springfield, Massachusetts (Empowerment Zone, 2015). Strong early gains. The program has resulted in mixed results. A decade later, half of the zone's 16 schools had improved enough to return to district control; the other half still struggle.
  • Orchard Gardens K–8, Boston (2010). Reading proficiency nearly tripled in three years. After the principal left and the federal money ended, the school slid back toward the bottom of Massachusetts schools. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Orchard Gardens K-8 School is rated as requiring assistance or intervention, in need of focused/targeted support, and among the lowest performing 10% of schools.
  • Tennessee (2012). District-run Innovation Zones produced early gains, but they stalled as the program expanded, faded once students reached high school, and Memphis has since phased the zone out. The state's Achievement School District, which turned schools over to charter operators, did no better than comparable schools. See "Tennessee’s costly, disruptive school turnaround work didn’t help students long term."
  • California's School Improvement Grants (2010). There were reported large gains during the three-year grants, concentrated in schools that replaced staff. A national evaluation found no significant effect overall, and Congress ended the program in 2016, though a later study including San Francisco found the gains largely held. An American Institutes for Research evaluation of California's High Priority Schools Grant Program, the state's earlier turnaround grant program, recommended ending categorical interventions of this kind in favor of comprehensive, long-term resource and administrative support for the lowest-performing schools.
  • Holyoke and Southbridge, Massachusetts (receivership, 2015 and 2016). Same law and state agency as Lawrence. After a decade, Holyoke's graduation rate rose from 60 to 77 percent, but its test scores barely moved; it returned to local control in 2025. Southbridge has cycled through multiple state receivers, struggles to keep teachers, and remains under state control. One of the most comprehensive reviews of the state takeover strategy, by Beth Schueler and Joshua Bleiberg, looked at 35 districts, spanning 14 states, that were taken over by state authorities between 2011 and 2016. The analysis included two Massachusetts districts, Lawrence and Holyoke, that were under state control at the time. “Overall, we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement,” the authors concluded.

None of these efforts was part of an overarching, statewide reform. Each targeted one district or a group of schools. Nothing in the state's larger system, its standards, tests, accountability or capacity to support teaching, was rebuilt to hold the gains in place. Let's now take a look at Mississippi's more systemic statewide approach to reform.

Mississippi: a two-decade top-to-bottom systemic marathon

In our last post we promised more on Mississippi. Its story is very different from the ones above. Mississippi did not try one bold intervention in a handful of schools. Over roughly twenty years, it rebuilt the rules for every school in the state, in a deliberate order, and held onto those changes through political storms. The emphasis was not on teacher replacement, or receiverships, but on building an infrastructure of systemic supports, effective practices and meaningful accountability.

The best account of how this happened comes from Rachel Canter, who founded Mississippi First, the state's leading education policy organization, and led it for 17 years. Her April 2026 report for the Progressive Policy Institute, Inside the Mississippi Marathon, is an insider's account, and Canter is candid that she helped write and pass many of the laws she describes. It is not an independent evaluation. But it is the most detailed explanation available of what Mississippi actually did, and it is worth reading in full.

From last to near the top

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the national test used to compare states, Mississippi was tied for last in reading and math when state testing began in 1992. By 2019 its fourth graders had reached the national average in both subjects, and it had substantially closed the gap in eighth grade. On average, Canter reports, Mississippi students improved about twice as fast as students nationally over two decades. After COVID, Mississippi's fourth graders recovered in reading and math while scores in much of the country kept falling.

The gains were not limited to the state's more advantaged students. Among fourth graders:

  • Black students matched their national peers in reading and math by 2017 and have outscored them since 2019.
  • Low-income students caught their national peers by 2015 and have outscored them since 2019.
  • Students with disabilities matched their peers in 2015 and outscored them in 2019 and 2024.
  • The state's weaker readers, those at the 25th percentile, beat the national average for that group in 2024.

Mississippi’s record is not uniformly strong. Its fourth-grade reading scores rose 10 points between 2013 and 2019 and have held steady since, while its eighth-grade reading scores have barely moved since 2013. But context matters. While Mississippi held steady, reading scores fell across most of the country, and the state’s eighth graders climbed from 50th to 41st in reading. Once the Urban Institute’s adjustments for poverty, race, disability and English-learner status are applied, even Mississippi’s weakest result, eighth-grade reading, ranks fourth in the nation. Adjusted scores are an estimate of how well a state teaches the students it has, not a measure of how well those students actually read, and too many Mississippi eighth graders still read below grade level. The state itself recognizes the problem: this year it added a $9 million initiative to bring reading coaches into middle and high schools. Mississippi’s lesson for Minnesota is not that it has finished the job, but that a sustained, statewide effort can move a whole system, and that the work has to continue past third grade.

Skeptics have argued that one aspect of Mississippi's state plan -- holding back weak third-grade readers -- inflates Mississippi's fourth-grade scores. Canter answers that retained students did not enter the fourth-grade test sample until 2017, after about three-quarters of the climb was complete, and that fourth graders taking the test are no older than before. Mississippi does hold back a large share of third graders, about 7 to 10 percent in recent years, but it held back many students before the reform as well, and one study attributes only about a fifth of the fourth-grade gain to retention. Th No child can be held back more than once under the law, so every student eventually reaches fourth grade and can be tested. The point here, is that Mississippi had a carefully considered statewide plan that seems to be working. Minnesota needs a bold plan that works for Minnesota, and if Minnesota can succeed without holding kids back, well great.

Not a reading law alone

Most national coverage credits Mississippi's "science of reading" law, and about 40 states have since adopted reading policies modeled on it. Canter argues that this reading of the story is badly incomplete. In her account, Mississippi's results rested on four pillars, all built around one idea, holding the whole system accountable for higher expectations:

  1. Standards, testing and accountability. Set high expectations for what students should learn in each grade, test honestly against them, and rate schools on the results.
  2. Consequences for poor performance. Give the state real power to intervene in schools and districts that keep failing. Canter argues that it is not that takeovers fixed Mississippi’s worst districts. It’s that a credible threat of consequences, combined with honest grades, gave every district a reason to take the standards, testing and reading reforms seriously.
  3. Evidence-based instruction. Adopt practices with a proven record, starting with how reading is taught.
  4. Support for implementation. Build a state department of education able to help districts do the work, especially the many small districts that could not build that capacity on their own. The cost was modest: the reading law's coaching, training and screening have run about $15 million a year since 2014, less than half a percent of the state's education budget, in a state that ranks near last in per-pupil spending.

The order mattered. Mississippi built the foundation first and turned to classroom instruction only after expectations and accountability were in place.

Building the foundation, 2004–2013

Higher standards, forced from outside. In 2004, a federal review under No Child Left Behind found Mississippi's standards and tests so weak that they did not meet federal requirements. The state raised them modestly. In 2010 it went much further, adopting the Common Core standards and joining a multistate testing group whose exams set a far higher bar for proficiency. Canter regards that step as the moment Mississippi stopped hiding mediocre learning behind high proficiency rates.

Real authority over failing districts. Mississippi had taken over troubled districts before, but mostly for financial or safety problems, and the takeovers did little for students. In 2009 the Children First Act let the state intervene in any district rated failing for two consecutive years, with student achievement at the center. Later laws widened the triggers: an F in two of three years, a D or F four years running, or more than half of a district's schools rated F.

An honest grading system. In 2012 the legislature required A-through-F grades for every school and district. MDE then rebuilt the formula behind the grades, and the legislature wrote it into law in 2013. Schools now earn credit only for students who are actually proficient, not partial credit for students below grade level. Growth means a year of learning in a year's time, with extra credit for improving the lowest-performing quarter of students. High schools get credit only for on-time, four-year graduates. Schools can predict their own grade once test results arrive.

The 2013 session. In the same month the accountability bill went to the governor, the legislature passed three more landmark laws: Mississippi's first state-funded pre-K program, which had to meet all ten national quality benchmarks; the Literacy-Based Promotion Act; and a charter school law. The pre-K and reading laws were drafted together so that children would see a consistent approach from pre-K through third grade.

The reading law, in full

The Literacy-Based Promotion Act is best known for its third-grade "gate": third graders who score at the lowest level on the state reading test must repeat the grade unless they pass a retest or qualify for a narrow exemption. When the law passed, about 14 percent of third graders scored at that level, while only about 3 percent were being held back each year. Opponents predicted retention rates near 30 percent. Legislators nonetheless gave the state only two years to prepare, and the gate took effect in 2015.

Canter stresses that legislators did not think children or teachers were simply not trying hard enough, and nobody was eager to hold children back. What won passage was the rest of the law, which built a system around early reading:

  • Screening for every child. Children take a kindergarten readiness test within 30 days of starting school, a reading screener three times a year from kindergarten through third grade, and a dyslexia screener at the end of kindergarten and start of first grade.
  • Parents told early and often. When a screener flags a problem, parents receive a state-drafted letter listing the help their child will get. The child gets a diagnostic test, an individual reading plan within two weeks, regular progress checks and a plan for reading at home.
  • Teachers trained in how reading is learned. Teacher-preparation programs must teach the science of reading, and pre-K through third-grade teachers must pass a state reading-science test, or complete a state-approved boot camp, to be licensed. Working teachers receive training from the state or their district.
  • A state-funded testing system. MDE pays for the kindergarten readiness test, screeners and diagnostics, and tracks whether every district uses them as required.
  • Direct state help in the weakest schools. In schools the state designates for literacy support, MDE chooses the curriculum and screeners, requires training for teachers and principals, and hires, trains and supervises a coach for every kindergarten through third-grade teacher.

The legislature also gave MDE $9.5 million to carry out the law, a notable sum in a tight budget year.

Separate research supports the gate's effect: students held back under the law scored substantially higher in sixth-grade reading than similar students who were promoted, though they had an extra year of school and their math scores did not change.

Who led

Mississippi's governor has limited constitutional power over schools. Authority rests mainly with the legislature and an appointed State Board of Education, which hires the state superintendent. Canter's account is therefore not a story of one governor or one superintendent but of a team.

  • Legislative leaders. After Republicans won both chambers in 2011, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves named Sen. Gray Tollison, a former school board attorney with a deep command of education law, to chair the Senate Education Committee. Tollison carried the accountability and charter bills himself and shepherded the rest through the Senate; Speaker Philip Gunn and a group of House members carried the companion bills. The pre-K and reading laws passed with more than 80 percent of the vote in both chambers, and the accountability bill passed without a single objection.
  • The governor. Gov. Phil Bryant signaled that 2013 would be devoted to education and offered his own package. Two years later, though, he led the push to drop Common Core and the new tests, so his support was not constant.
  • The state department of education. Interim superintendent Lynn House and her chief academic officer, Kim Benton, a former turnaround principal, began implementing the new laws in 2013. Carey Wright, superintendent from late 2013, reorganized MDE around measurable goals, reported publicly each year on progress toward them, and changed the department's role from policing compliance to helping districts succeed.
  • Partners outside government. Mississippi First, the Barksdale Reading Institute, university reading experts, a handful of reform-minded superintendents, and Jeb Bush's ExcelinEd all played roles. Canter notes that Mississippi never had large philanthropic support; the work rested on relationships built over years.

Holding the line

The reforms nearly collapsed in 2015. That year the new tests and the third-grade gate took effect for the first time, every statewide office and legislative seat was on the ballot, and a national backlash against Common Core had reached Mississippi. Conservative media attacked the standards daily, district leaders warned of mass retentions, the governor campaigned to scrap the standards and tests, and legislators feared primary challenges.

Mississippi kept its standards, the third-grade gate, its accountability system and the independence of its education department. Canter describes one morning when Sen. Tollison, threatened with losing his chairmanship, refused to advance a bill that would have let a politically appointed panel rewrite the standards, and the two of them redrafted it on the spot. The state did give something up: it left the multistate testing group. But MDE quickly bought a replacement test of similar difficulty and changed the standards as little as possible.

Once the politics cooled, the work continued quietly. In 2016 the state raised the bar for passing the third-grade gate and required a reading plan for every child with identified difficulties. The reading-science licensing test for new elementary teachers took effect. School grades based on the harder tests began to carry consequences. In 2018 MDE redesigned its review of curricula so that districts would choose high-quality materials. In 2019, fourth graders reached the national average, the goal the State Board had set a decade earlier.

What Mississippi did not do

Canter emphasizes what Mississippi left out as much as what it did. It resisted chasing the latest reform idea. It did not spend its political capital on teacher evaluation, tenure or merit pay fights, and its charter sector stayed small, only six schools by 2019. It had no large foundation money and no wave of outside talent. Its gains came from policy, people and persistence, sustained across changes in party control, three governors and several superintendents.

A warning to states copying Mississippi

Many states now say they are copying Mississippi, but Canter finds that most are adopting only the comfortable parts. Professional development and coaching are popular; changes to teacher licensing are adopted about half as often. Twenty-seven states allow or require holding back third graders who cannot read, but most allow broad exemptions, such as a teacher's judgment or simply completing a reading plan, that do not ensure a child can read before fourth grade. Mississippi's exemptions are narrow, and its requirement to notify parents repeatedly, year after year, means no family is surprised when a child still cannot read at the end of third grade.

In Canter's words, "Piecemeal policy gets piecemeal results." States that adopt the reading curriculum without the standards, accountability and state capacity behind it, she warns, will be disappointed, and may wrongly conclude that the science of reading does not work.

What this means for Minnesota

Four lessons stand out.

Reform has to be systemic. School-by-school turnarounds, even successful ones, rarely last on their own. Mississippi's gains came from changing the rules for every school: expectations, testing, accountability, consequences, instruction and state support, adopted in sequence and kept in place for years. COMPASS, voluntary and aimed at individual schools, resembles the piecemeal efforts, not Mississippi. Nor is the difference money. Since 2023 Minnesota has appropriated more than $110 million in one-time funding for its READ Act, on top of about $45 million a year in literacy aid, more per student than Mississippi spends. But Minnesota distributes most of that money to every district by formula, while Mississippi spends most of its money on state coaches in its lowest-performing schools, backed by the third-grade gate, A-through-F school grades and the threat of state intervention. Minnesota's reading law has none of those.

Change has to reach the classroom. The successes changed teaching, added learning time, and put effective teachers in front of the students who needed them most. Takeovers that only changed who was in charge did not help.

Support has to be sustained. Orchard Gardens, half of Springfield's zone schools and Minnesota's own 2022 exits tell the same story: a short burst of help, followed by business as usual, fades. Mississippi's leaders stayed with their agenda through elections, a fierce political backlash and changes in leadership.

Results have to be measured. We know what Lawrence, Springfield and Tennessee's Innovation Zones achieved because someone measured it carefully, and we know Holyoke and the Achievement School District failed for the same reason. Minnesota has spent years on school support without ever measuring its effect. It cannot tell which of its efforts work, so it cannot do more of what works and stop what does not.

None of this requires Minnesota to copy another state's program. It requires the state to decide that persistent failure in a school is the state's problem, not only the district's, and to back that decision with the authority, money and staff to do something about it.

In our next post, we will look at a different kind of evidence: charter schools, in Boston and here in St. Paul, that have produced strong results for low-income students year after year, and what their practices could teach Minnesota's public schools.

Sources

Turnarounds

Mississippi

Minnesota

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Message for Governor-Elect Klobuchar: Mississippi Demonstrates that Statewide Bold Systemic Education Reform Really Works

Minnesota now has a governor-elect who has the toughness, the intellect, and legislative support to begin the hard work necessary to reform ...