While Mississippi politicians brag about the "Mississippi Miracle", third-grade reading-gate scores fell for most school districts in the Jackson metro area. Only Madison and Canton public schools saw improvements
Jackson continued to lead the decline as only 53% of its third-graders passed the test, a sharp drop from the 67% it enjoyed in 2023. Pearl Public Schools suffered the next largest decrease, falling from 92% in 2023 to 85% in 2026.
School, score, (2026) (2025) (2024)(2023)(2022)(2019)
Canton: 67% (62%) (62%) (71%)(62%)(72%)
Clinton: 87% (89%) (88%) (86%)(90%)(86%)
Hinds County: 66% (70%) (63%) (68%)(71%)(67%)
JPS: 53% (55%) (54%) (67%)(61%)(64%)
Madison County: 91% (89%) (92%) (89%)(90%)(91%)
Pearl: 85% (87%) (91%) (92%)(87%)(89%)
Rankin County: 86% (89%) (89%) (87%)(84%)(83%)
2019 is the last year when the third-grade reading tests were administered before the Covid shutdowns. The public school districts that remained closed the longest, Canton and Jackson, still have not seen their third-grade reading scores recover to their 2019 scores. The Jackson Public Schools district is eleven points below where it was before the pandemic of 2020. It should be noted JPS and Canton kept their schools closed longer than did other local school districts.
Maybe it's not fair to compare JPS to other area public schools. After all, JPS is nearly 100$% black and there are much higher levels of poverty among its students. Fair enough. Let's compare apples to apples.
Hattiesburg: 75%
Greenville: 77%
What is even more troubling for JPS is how Hattiesburg and Greenville's scores rose substantially from 2019.
Hattiesburg: 65%
Greenville: 54%
Unfortunately, the reading-gate statewide score fell from 77.3% in 2025 to 75.6% in 2026. However, the 2026 score was at the same as it was in 2024.
The scores are posted below.
MDE Press Release
The Mississippi Department of Education announces that 75.6% or 24,118 of third graders passed the initial administration of the third-grade reading assessment given this spring for the 2025-26 school year. A total of 31,887 students took the test.
In 2024-25, 77.3% of third graders passed the initial administration of the assessment, with 84.6% of students passing after final retests. In 2023-24, 75.7% of students passed the initial administration, with 84% passing after final retests.
In accordance with the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (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 took retests from May 11-15. The second retest window is June 22-26.
The LBPA became law in 2013 to improve reading skills of kindergarten through third-grade students in public schools, so every student completing the third grade is able to read at or above grade level. The LBPA requires Mississippi third graders to pass a reading assessment to qualify for promotion to fourth grade. Some students may qualify for good cause exemptions to be promoted to fourth grade.
An amendment to the law in 2016 raised reading-level expectations starting in the 2018-19 school year, requiring third graders to score at level three or higher on the reading portion of the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) English Language Arts (ELA) assessment.
To see the district- and school-level initial pass rate report for 2025-26, go to mdek12.org/publicreporting/
Final district-level pass rates will be published this fall in the Literacy-Based Promotion Act Annual Report of Performance and Student Retention for the 2025-26 school year.
1 comment:
Don’t send your kids to public schools. Home school or private schools
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