Here's Part I of this series.
We're in the middle of a governor's race here in New Jersey, and the Republican candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, is saying some highly questionable things about NJ's schools.
Jack Ciattarelli: We do have the most segregated schools, but I wonder if we would be having this discussion if the performance of schools with predominantly black student populations were outperforming schools with predominantly white populations. We need to get back on day one to improving all of our schools, and I intend to do that with a high-impact curriculum. New Jersey recently slipped from two to 12 on the national report card. Most of that’s because we haven’t made up for all the learning lost when Phil Murphy and the Democrats shut down our schools for two years. We opened up our nursing homes, and we closed down our schools. Louisiana and Mississippi have moved significantly—Louisiana from 48 to 32 with a high-impact curriculum. What is that exactly? If your child is behind a grade level in any of the critical life skills, like reading, writing, or math, that child will spend the next marking period and the one thereafter doing nothing other than reading, writing, and math to get them on grade level. The data is clear. I’m a data-driven guy as an MBA and CPA. If the child is not on grade level for reading and writing by the end of eighth grade, more than likely, they will be underemployed their entire life. So while that lawsuit proceeds, let’s pick the schools on day one with a high-impact curriculum. [emphasis mine]
"The" national report card? What is that, Jack? Whose report card? Whose ranking? What year are we talking about?
An unfortunate fact of our nation's conversation about education is that politicians like Ciattarelli will regularly repeat questionable, unverified talking points like this, and no one—no one—from the media will ever ask for specifics or sources. (To be fair, neither will their political rivals; does Mike Sherrill's staff fact check Jack's claims?)
Ciattarelli's claim is a variation on the "Mississippi Miracle" trope, which, in turn, finds its roots in the "Science Of Reading" movement. Basically, recent boosts in some of Mississippi's scores on national tests (more in a sec) have prompted pundits to claim that the state's embrace of a certain type of reading instruction has transformed the state's schools. As a consequence, politicians of both parties have held up Mississippi as a role model for other states -- including high-performing states like New Jersey.
I'll leave a full discussion of the Science of Reading to experts like Paul Thomas. For now, it's enough to note that many of the claims advocates make about SoR are way, way overblown, and that a lot of people have embraced phonics instruction as if it was abandoned for years, which it was not. But put that aside... let's instead focus on Mississippi—as well as Louisiana and Florida, two other states Ciattarelli has lauded. Have they seen their test scores rise while New Jersey's fell?
Before answering, we first have to understand that each state has its own accountability tests, aligned to different learning standards and testing different content. There are very few ways to directly compare test scores in one state against another, because there aren't any tests given to all children in all states.
The closest thing we have to a national test that allows comparisons between states is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation's report card. The NAEP is not given to every child in the nation, but to a representative sample of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th Grades.*
The two main tests are in math and reading. We'll start with the Grade 4 reading test: how is Mississippi doing compared to New Jersey? In fact, Mississippi is catching up:
There's no doubt that Mississippi, and Louisiana, have seen significant growth in Grade 4 reading scores. There's also no doubt New Jersey has seen a decline over the past several years. Of course, so has Florida, another state often touted as an educational "miracle." For that matter, the nation overall has seen declining scores since 2015.But did you note where NJ stands as of 2024? NJ is still above the nation, and above Ciattarelli's preferred states, on Grade 4 reading scores.Pundits often cheer for the "growth" Mississippi has shown in its 4th Grade scores. But go back to 2003—see how low the state was? This is a key point that gets lost: It's much easier to grow your test scores when you start off low, because you literally have no where to go but up!Now, unlike some others, I'm not prepared to completely dismiss Mississippi's test score rise in Grade 4, especially because there's also growth in math scores.
This is interesting, because I've yet to hear anyone talk about the "Science of Math." It could be better reading ability helps students perform better in math. It could be Mississippi made changes in math instruction. It could be that Mississippi was so bad back in 2003 that simply changing standards to better align with the NAEP led to gains that were fairly easy to achieve. It could also be that demographic changes in student populations had an effect.
In a typically sober and fair article, Matt Barnum looked at a variety of potential courses for the gains, including Mississippi's Grade 3 retention policy. Matt's more skeptical about retention's potential effects than I am, but OK, there's certainly room here for discussion.
What there is no evidence of, however, is that Mississippi has been taking kids out of every class but math and reading and writing when they don't read on grade level—which is Ciattarelli's plan.
Where did Ciattarelli even get this insane idea? He's says he's a "data-driven" guy; OK, where's the data to support this? Are we seriously thinking of denying kids music and art and PE and science and social studies and tech and all sorts of other mandated subjects because "data-driven" Jack believes that's what they do in southern states? Where is his evidence? Isn't it fair to ask?
Furthermore, if Jack is so "data-drive," why hasn't he looked at the NAEP results in Grade 8? Because they tell a very different story.
The highly-praised 4th Grade test score "growth" in Mississippi is almost completely missing in Grade 8. And, yes, New Jersey has seen declines since 2017—but so has the rest of the nation. And yet New Jersey still sits at the top of the heap.
Think about it this way: Suppose you are offered a brand new house anywhere you want to live in the US. The catch is you have to send your kids to public school. Which state are you going to choose, based on these scores?
As I said in the last post, New Jersey has a lot of work to do on its "opportunity gap." But it has been, and remains, a relatively high performing state. We should be extremely cautious about throwing that advantage away by emulating states that may have had a few gains, but continue to struggle in many other ways.
Let's talk about Jack and school taxes next.
* Most researchers put little stock in the 12th Grade tests as 17-year-old students have no incentive to perform well on them.
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