Should Pennsylvania Copy Mississippi’s Education Model?
The debate over how to fix Pennsylvania’s struggling public schools took an unexpected turn during a recent gubernatorial debate, prompting a hard look at an unlikely educational success story down south. Republican candidate Stacy Garrity pointed to Mississippi’s dramatic academic turnaround as a blueprint for Pennsylvania, arguing that the Keystone State spends significantly more per student while producing worse results.
According to government statistics released by the government of Pennsylvania for the 2024-2025 school year, only 30.5% of Pennsylvania children test as proficient or above in math by the eighth grade. Garrity’s proposed solution involves establishing academic “gates” at the end of the third and eighth grades, requiring students to demonstrate grade-level reading and math proficiency before moving forward. This mirrors the policy implemented in Mississippi more than a decade ago, sparking a fierce debate among educators and policymakers about whether retention alone can rescue student achievement.
The Reality of the Mississippi Miracle
In 2013, Republican governor Phil Bryant passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which instituted a grade-retention policy for third-graders who failed to meet reading standards. The results transformed the state’s standing on national assessments. Mississippi climbed from 49th in the United States for fourth-grade reading in 2013 to ninth by 2024. When adjusted for relative poverty by the Urban Institute, Mississippi’s 2024 scores rank nation-leading in fourth-grade reading, fourth-grade math, and eighth-grade math, while landing fourth in eighth-grade reading.
However, education experts emphasize that the policy was never just about holding children back. Kymyona Burk, Ed.D, who served as the State Literacy Director at the Mississippi Department of Education and led the implementation of the act, wrote in a 2022 essay for the George W. Bush Institute that effective execution requires strong support structures. To prevent retention from becoming a punitive measure that isolates struggling students, Mississippi trained all kindergarten through third-grade educators in the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) framework and deployed expert reading coaches to assist underperforming schools.
Pennsylvania Mandates Structured Literacy Training Without Funding Reading Coaches
Pennsylvania operates under a very different legislative framework. Act 55 of 2022 mandated that every school entity’s professional development plan include structured literacy training, and required teacher preparation programs to align with state-developed literacy standards. Yet, unlike Mississippi’s comprehensive overhaul, Pennsylvania lacks a statewide student retention policy tied to grade progression, and it has not funded reading coaches to guide educators through the transition.
Implementing the LETRS model is also remarkably expensive. For instance, Michigan allocated $75 million toward LETRS training in its 2027 budget, according to Bridge Michigan. While districts across the country have rushed to adopt the framework as a silver bullet following pandemic-related disruptions, researchers note that results outside of Mississippi have been decidedly mixed. A 2011 study by Joanne F. Carlisle, Kai Schnabel Cortina, and Lauren A. Katz emphasized that extensive, in-school support for teachers is essential to enact genuine classroom changes.
What Lies Ahead for Pennsylvania Schools
With Pennsylvania currently performing below Mississippi in fourth-grade reading and only marginally better in fourth-grade math—despite spending more than 75% more per student on average—lawmakers face mounting pressure to reform. Yet critics caution that simply installing academic gates without the corresponding curriculum adjustments, teacher coaching, and financial backing risks punishing students who lack adequate home resources.
Whether Pennsylvania will embrace a version of the Southern model remains an open question as the gubernatorial election cycle unfolds. The central challenge for policymakers is determining whether the state is willing to fund the expensive infrastructure required to make such dramatic reforms work, or if the debate will stop at political rhetoric.
