The Mississippi Department of Education issued the following statement.
The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) today announced 85% of third graders passed the third-grade reading assessment after the final retest for the 2024-25 school year. The pass rate is higher than the 2023-24 final pass rate of 84%.
Mississippi’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) requires third graders to achieve a passing score of Level 3 or higher on the reading portion of the state’s English Language Arts (ELA) assessment to qualify for promotion to fourth grade. The assessment has five levels. Students who score at Level 4 are considered proficient; Level 5 is advanced.
A record 77.3% of third graders passed the initial administration of the third-grade reading assessment given in spring 2025. In accordance with the LBPA, third graders who do not pass the initial administration of the reading test are given up to two attempts to retest. Students who did not pass the initial reading assessment retested in early May and in June.
Students who do not pass the test after the final attempt are retained in third grade unless they qualify for one of the good cause exemptions for certain students with disabilities, students learning English or students who have been previously retained. Local school districts determine which students who did not pass qualify for an exemption for promotion to fourth grade. Districts also consider their local promotion and retention policies for making determinations.
In an effort to increase literacy outcomes in Mississippi for the 2024-2025 school year, MDE did the following:
- Continued providing job-embedded training guided by literacy coaches at Literacy Support Schools
- Expanded opportunities for professional development at the state, district, and school levels
- Supported and promoted the adoption and implementation of High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM)
- Increased the number of school and district staff trained in the Science of Reading
- Collaborated with educator preparation programs to integrate Science of Reading training for pre-service teachers
MDE remains committed to advancing these initiatives to improve literacy achievement among Mississippi’s students.
The LBPA enacted in 2013 was created to help ensure kindergarten through third-grade students develop good reading skills. The law was amended in 2016 to raise the passing score on the third-grade reading test starting in the 2018-19 school year.
Final district-level pass rates are published in the Literacy-Based Promotion Act Annual Report for the 2024-25 school year and can be viewed at mdek12.org/publicreporting/
9 comments:
Ironically, the remaining 15% appear to be regular commenters on this forum.
Allow an independent contractor to give the test off site, my guess 40% pass rate. The reason it’s not 100% the teachers that assisted can’t read on that level.
Can’t wait for vouchers next year!
It will all be undone by vouchers next year that no one wants except ALEC. It’s working so well in the other states that have already done it.
Comment of the year.
Every time K12 makes progress in Mississippi, which is a good thing, the same bunch of idiots neighsay the shit out of it. Usually, it's (without any proof) claiming widespread cheating (there are a number of technologies now that detect cheating on this test, btw)... others just refuse to believe it. The test is given on an electronic platform delivered by a 3rd party. If you get a bunch of questions right along with your neighbor, they pull the seating chart and investigate. The questions are of varying depth of knowledge, and there are some questions a 3rd grader SHOULDN'T know to tease out cheating adults. If you click the wrong answer and then change your answer to the correct one, that gets flagged too. But none of that fits into the 'teachers are just cheating' narrative.
Folks, you can't bitch about the system and then bitch when it does better. I mean, I guess you can, but it makes you a hypocrite and an asshole for betting against 3rd graders reading.
When kids in the classrooms do better, Mississippi does better. You should think about why you would want them not to legitimately do better.
I'd love to see another reading test given in the 7th grade to see how many of them are staying on track. Progress has no doubt been made but we also had a low bar to start with. Teachers and students should be proud of their gains.
It's very frustrating to see the Governor and state leadership tout the growth in achievement due to our policies and also say we "must" implement school choice that no one is asking for outside of the national Republican party.
"I'd love to see another reading test given in the 7th grade to see how many of them are staying on track. Progress has no doubt been made but we also had a low bar to start with. Teachers and students should be proud of their gains." Students are tested every year, you can see their track record throughout their whole school career. There is always a bell curve, I don't think people realize that. Some classes are advanced, some normal, some lower. Nothing wrong with that either. Not everyone will be a doctor or lawyer, we still need plumbers and carpenters (that probably make more money than the doctors and lawyers!)
Rigged
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