Achievement gaps in eighth grade math are growing in every state across the country. But in reading, they’re actually a bit worse. In fact, 10 states — Arkansas, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Florida, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland — have seen the gap between their best and their worst readers widen by more than 20 points since 2013, underscoring the importance of embracing systems change for literacy.

There are two ways for a gap to grow. The top can pull away, or the bottom can fall out. Here in the United States, the key problem is that the bottom is falling, and the changes are not small. At the national level, in fourth grade reading, the scores of the top 10% of students fell 0.5 points from 2013-24. Meanwhile, the scores of the bottom 10% fell 15 points.

The state-level results are even more jarring. To put those in perspective, consider that the average student gains about 8 points per year on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading tests. The chart below shows the change from 2013 to 2024 in the scores for the bottom 10% of students in each state. For this group, 40 states saw a decline of 10 points or more, 16 saw declines of 20 points or more and two states — Delaware and Maryland — had declines of more than 30 (!) points.

But one state is bucking this trend: Mississippi. Indeed, there’s been a fair amount of coverage of Mississippi’s reading progress in recent years, but its gains are so impressive that they merit another look.

First, it’s worth remembering that Mississippi is the poorest state in the country. Its per-capita income is below $50,000, and it spends less on its public schools than all but three states. But when the Urban Institute adjusted NAEP scores based on each state’s demographics, Mississippi’s fourth-grade reading scores came out on top.

Even without those adjustments, though, Mississippi looks pretty great. Its Black students rank third nationally, and its low-income kids outperform those in every other state. Mississippi is also the only state to see gains across all performance levels over the last decade. Its average went up, but so did the scores of its highest and lowest performers. Mississippi raised the bar and the floor at the same time.

Read the full article about embracing systems change for literacy by Chad Aldeman at The 74.