Understanding the Southern Surge
Looking to understand this promising four-state story? Here's a reading list.
To my great delight, the Southern Surge—a promising four-state literacy story—has captured the nation’s attention over the last year. It has been hard to keep up with all the writing and chatter.
For anyone catching up, this reading list covers all of the angles.
While I’m biased, I think my original piece on the Southern Surge, which broke the story, offers the most detail, for those up for the 3,000-word version. It’s rich with links to others’ writing.
But if you want to start at a high level, I give you…
The Southern Surge Executive Summary
What did Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama do to outpace the nation in reading growth? These four states share a common set of reforms, albeit with different orders of operation, timelines, and emphases.
We must get straight on the plays in the Southern Surge playbook. Because 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
After writing my detailed overview of the reforms, 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
Kunjan Narechania, former Chief of Staff at the Louisiana DOE, worked with former Commissioner John White to capture ways that structure and culture in southern states foster these reforms.
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.
The “Northern Nosedive” proclaimed by the Boston Globe compared the northeast and Southern Surge states, to memorable effect.
Aspiring presidential candidate Rahm Emauel declared that “Democrats need an education reset,” and these states’ reforms “should be the meat and potatoes of Democrats’ education agenda.”
In The Atlantic, Idrees Kahloon explored the “low-expectations theory” for American educational declines, citing the Southern Surge as an important counter factual.
David Brooks also cheered the “so-called Southern Surge” in the New York Times.
These 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, revealing the role of demographics in state outcomes. It’ll blow your mind.
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.
Debunking Misinfo
Have you heard bad rumors that Mississippi’s gains are just a data anomaly?
Kelsey Piper and I collaborated on a piece to push back on this misunderstanding.
Later, 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 poster child for state reform, instead.
Replication Risks
I’m closing with my own cautionary notes about the national efforts to chase similar reforms:
The Southern Surge Watershed reflects on headwinds and tailwinds for these reforms.
Policy is Not Progress surveys the track record for literacy reform (and samples Rick Hess).
Thank you to everyone who has written about—and read about—these states. I’m inspired by the excitement about this story.
Parts of this exec summary were first published in The Argument.