Contextualizing Mississippi’s 2024 NAEP Scores
By Grace Breazeale | Director of Research and K-12 Policy This week, the National Center for Education Statistics released 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) assessment results, commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.” The assessment is administered across the nation every two years in grades 4 and 8. Unlike state-specific standardized tests, the NAEP […]
Literacy Series: Factors Related to Post-Pandemic Improvement
Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on third grade literacy achievement. You can find the first part here. *** By Grace Breazeale | Director of Research and K-12 Policy In the first part of this series, we explored the effectiveness of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) across Mississippi school districts, as well […]
Literacy Series: Pre-Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Literacy Achievement in Mississippi
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part series on the Literacy-Based Promotion Act. *** By Grace Breazeale | Director of Research and K-12 Policy Between 2013 and 2019, fourth grade reading scores on the nationwide NAEP test increased by ten points in Mississippi–a larger increase than in any other state during this time […]
Raising Student Achievement in Mississippi’s Highest Need Districts
By Toren Ballard For the second year in a row, results from the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) exams suggest that Mississippi is continuing to defy nationwide trends in educational achievement: proficiency levels across all subjects were at all-time highs in 2023, and Mississippi is now one of just two states nationwide to have exceeded its pre-pandemic proficiency […]
Trends in High School Graduation and Postsecondary Enrollment Rates
Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of an ongoing series of posts dedicated to K-12 education policy in Mississippi. *** By Grace Breazeale | Director of Research and K-12 Policy Mississippi’s high school graduation rate has steadily risen over the past five years, which would typically be a cause for celebration. But in this case, […]
Squaring the Circle: Learning Loss and Rising District Grades
By Toren Ballard This fall, Mississippians received two widely divergent narratives about the state of public education post-COVID: On September 29, the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) released school and district accountability grades for the 2021-2022 school year, showing unprecedented improvement: 87% of districts were rated “C” or higher, up from 70% in 2019, the last time MDE […]
School Grades: A Few Pointers (Cont.)
By Rachel Canter Yesterday, we did a thread to explain school grades. Here’s some additional information about growth because it is the hardest part to understand. Usually, when schoolwide proficiency goes up, growth will go up as well, BUT it is possible to have higher proficiency scores schoolwide from one year to the next and still have a […]
School Grades: A Few Pointers
By Rachel Canter School grades came out unofficially yesterday, and we’re already seeing (sometimes uninformed) chatter about what they mean. Here are a few pointers: Our state accountability system is based mostly on how well kids do on their end-of-year tests. The end-of-year tests are given in reading and math to all kids in grades 3-8, […]
Understanding the Re-Setting of Cut Scores in Mississippi’s Accountability System, Part 3
By Rachel Canter This post is the last in our three-part series on cut scores. Read Part 1 (A-F system) and Part 2 (Setting Cut Scores) before this if you need more background knowledge to understand this post. Proposals for Changing the Cut Scores There have been three proposals for how to change cut scores: MDE’s original recommendation, the […]
Understanding the Re-Setting of Cut Scores in Mississippi’s Accountability System, Part 2
By Rachel Canter This blog post is Part 2. Read Part 1 here: https://www.mississippifirst.org/blog/understanding-re-setting-cut-scores-mississippis-accountability-system-part-1/. Setting Cut Scores The process of setting cut scores is in part technical and in part political. First, staff at the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) compile all the scores from schools and districts and rank each from highest to lowest. (Schools […]