A Southern Surge Reading List
Looking to understand the Southern Surge? I got you.
A nice pile of writing has accrued on the Southern Surge. Here’s a reading list.
I’m biased, but I think my original piece on the Southern Surge offers the most detail, and it contains links galore, if you want the 3,000-word version.
Executive Summary
We must get straight on the plays in the Southern Surge playbook. Because, for the love of God, it’s not just phonics. There are four parts to the playbook:
Mandatory screening of students in grades K-3, three times a year, using approved assessment tools, to monitor how early reading skills are developing
Focused efforts to improve curriculum quality in schools — for phonics and other aspects of literacy
Large-scale efforts to train teachers
Retention policies to hold back students who aren’t reading successfully by the end of third grade
Many focus on the retention policies. They are important and do seem to motivate adults to pull out all the stops. But kids cannot learn to read on retention mandates alone. Retention policies work because so much is done between Kindergarten and third grade to ensure all kids develop reading skills.
Before a student is retained, he or she will be screened 12 times across four grades, using a quality screening tool approved by the state. Well-trained teachers will have quality lesson materials, and they will know which students need extra support. It’s a system set up to work so that very few students need to be retained in third grade — which is exactly what happens.
One can debate the best order of operations. But one cannot reduce those multilayered reforms, which have been underway for 20+ years in Mississippi, 13 years in Louisiana, six years in Tennessee, and six years in Alabama, to “they just went back to basics with phonics1.
Peeling Back The Onion
I dove deeper into these details:
How Book-Rich, Knowledge-Rich Curriculum is Fueling the Southern Surge
Where Tennessee Tops All, and deserves to be the national model
How the Southern Surge story is being oversimplified, and how states are missing the boat on replication
Hear From Journalists
Kelsey Piper penned an absolute must-read, “Illiteracy is a policy choice,” getting into the performance weeds versus other states.
Nick Kristof of the New York Times visited Southern Surge states, and returned to proclaim: These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling.
I linked additional journalism from this earlier piece.
Southern Surge States vs Your State
Are you under the impression that your high-performing state has nothing to learn from these states? I highly recommend Chad Aldeman’s insightful comparison of New Jersey vs Mississippi/Louisiana. It’ll blow your mind.
The “Northern Nosedive” proclaimed by the Boston Globe compares the northeast and Southern Surge states, to memorable effect.
Debunking Misinfo
Have you heard bad rumors that Mississippi’s gains are just some data anomaly?
Kelsey Piper and I collaborated on a piece to push back on this misunderstanding.
Then Kelsey went even deeper into the data in a two-part series that chased every foul ball.
I got Mississippi Misinfo Fatigue, and made a case for using Louisiana as the reference case, instead.
Competing Theories
Rachel Canter has made the case that Mississippi’s accountability work deserves more credit than it’s being given.
Elliot Haspel thinks the early childhood work gets some credit.
Neetu Arnold and Daniel Buck think school discipline policies are a factor.
Replication Risks
Closing with my own cautionary note about the national efforts to chase similar reforms, Policy is Not Progress, which also features Rick Hess’s similar notes.
Thank you to everyone who has written about—and read about—these states. I’m inspired by the excitement about this story.
My exec summary was first published in The Argument.