Emily Hanford notes the “surge in legislative activity” amidst our long‑term, disastrous reading results. Longtime readers may recall a few of these articles — bookmarking our times, so to speak. Alongside Wisconsin’s story runs a second one: Mississippi, which started at the very bottom and, over the same years, worked its way past us.
The lines cross: NAEP Grade 4 reading, 1998–2024
Average scale scores, public schools · Wisconsin, Mississippi, and the nation
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2000Mississippi
On January 20, in a high‑school auditorium in Jackson, Jim and Sally Barksdale announce a $100 million investment — then the largest private gift to literacy in the nation’s history — founding the Barksdale Reading Institute. Both are Mississippi natives; Barksdale, the former Netscape chief executive, could not read in the second grade himself — a story he tells in The Mississippi Story. By the institute’s own account Mississippi’s fourth graders then ranked 49th in the nation; the nearest NAEP measurement, 1998, puts them at 203 against a national 213.
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2004
The gap between state and national measures comes into focus [link]:
“In 2003, 80% of Wisconsin fourth graders scored proficient or advanced on the WCKE in reading. However, in the same year only 33% of Wisconsin fourth graders reached the proficient or advanced level in reading on the NAEP.”
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2005
Madison’s administration argues the achievement gap is closing — measured at the lowest level of performance [link].
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2007
Madison declines roughly $2 million in federal Reading First funds rather than alter its balanced‑literacy approach. Writing at Language Log, UW‑Madison cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg calls the district’s stated reason the “big lie”: the money was bound for five low‑achieving schools and carried no requirement to change the curriculum anywhere in the district. He notes that how much phonics a Madison child received depended on the teacher — and that the missing instruction was quietly outsourced to parents, tutors and commercial learning centers.
The local record assembled at the time is unsparing: the superintendent maintained the district’s own data showed children learning at the rate Reading First sought, but the state reading test had been made easier and its proficiency cut score lowered, which lifted every district’s numbers. On the federal NAEP — unchanged, and therefore comparable — there was no fourth‑grade progress at all.
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2008
“Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum.”
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2009
Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman addresses the Madison Rotary Club on “What Wisconsin’s Public Education Model Needs to Learn from General Motors Before it is too late”:
“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.”
Richard Zimman, Superintendent, Ripon Area School District · August 5, 2009 · full remarks · audioHe closed, at twenty‑seven minutes: simply spending more on schools as they are now is not the answer — we cannot afford more of the same at a bigger price tag.
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2010
When A Stands for Average: students at the UW‑Madison School of Education receive sky‑high grades. How smart is that? Also that year: WEAC’s $1.57M for four state senators.
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2011
A Capitol Conversation on how teachers are taught — prospective teachers immersed in the theories of Vygotsky and Dewey rather than fifty years of cognitive science. On the Read to Lead Task Force’s recommendation, 2011 Wisconsin Act 166 requires new elementary, special education and reading teachers to pass an examination identical to the Massachusetts Foundations of Reading test. It binds no one until January 31, 2014.
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2013
Alan Borsuk: the Massachusetts test becomes the Wisconsin test — a step advocates see as key to raising the quality of reading instruction statewide.
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2013Mississippi
Governor Phil Bryant signs the Literacy‑Based Promotion Act (Senate Bill 2347): intensive intervention for any K‑3 student with a reading deficiency, notice to parents, and no promotion past third grade for children whose deficiency is not remedied, subject to good‑cause exemptions. The retention provision earns it the name “the third‑grade gate.” Teacher training and literacy coaches — the parts that would prove decisive — were left to appropriation rather than written into the bill; the state funded $9.5 million and fielded coaches, though fewer than advocates sought. At this point Mississippi’s fourth‑grade NAEP reading score is 209 — twelve points below Wisconsin.
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2017
Foundations of Reading first‑time pass rates settle in the mid‑60s after the higher cut score takes effect (78% under the initial cut score; 66–68% after). And a reading interventionist’s three‑minute remarks to the Madison school board on the district’s disastrous reading results.
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2018
Wisconsin DPI works to weaken the FORT, while a spokesman says “we set a high bar for achievement.” Borsuk points to Massachusetts, where officials stuck to the requirement and pass rates rose. Meanwhile: “the data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic.”
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2019
My question to Governor Evers on teacher mulligans. Borsuk again: Mississippi — the only state whose fourth‑grade NAEP reading scores improved — is implementing a strong teacher‑training requirement, as Massachusetts did in the 1990s.
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2020
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, national citizenship, and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
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2021
DPI Superintendent Jill Underly supports eliminating the FORT, calling it “an unnecessary hoop.” That November, Governor Evers vetoes AB446/SB454 — a Friday‑afternoon rejection of early‑literacy screening and personal reading plans for K‑2 students.
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2022
The national tide turns. Dana Goldstein reports that phonics is ascendant and that Lucy Calkins has revised her approach, crediting critics including Seidenberg — whose Language at the Speed of Sight belongs within reaching distance of every desk — and Emily Hanford, whose Sold a Story podcast investigates how a disproven idea about reading held sway in schools for a generation.
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2022SEDSO
SEDSO releases said.
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2023
A legislative hearing on our long‑term results: “It’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.” Further attempts to kill the FORT continue as first‑time pass rates fall to 54%, down from 66% in 2014‑15.
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2023Mississippi
The Barksdale Reading Institute concludes operations in June, twenty‑two years after it began and a year after announcing the decision. It ends by design rather than exhaustion, and it does not so much close as relocate: BRI’s teacher‑training materials become Reading Universe, built with WETA and First Book to carry the Mississippi model, free, to teachers anywhere. The philanthropy had preceded the legislation by thirteen years; by 2019 Mississippi had risen from 49th in fourth‑grade reading to 26th, and ranked among the nation’s top performers in accelerating growth for children in poverty and children of color.
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2023SEDSO
SEDSO releases the 300 most popular words in children’s literature.
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2024
Ongoing literacy legislation litigation: the Governor’s partial veto (mind the mulligans); “Taxpayer‑funded Wisconsin DPI should stop playing games with childhood literacy”; and did DPI Superintendent Underly juice test scores for reelection?
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2024SEDSO
SEDSO publishes Read American Democracy and Read World History with the Attainment Company.
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2025Mississippi
The 2024 NAEP results land: Mississippi fourth graders (219) outscore the national average for the first time. Wisconsin (215) is now statistically indistinguishable from the nation (214) — see the chart above.
- 2025
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2025SEDSO
SEDSO publishes Fast Lane Literacy. Back story.
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2025SEDSO
SEDSO begins publishing literacy maps with the 2024‑2025 Wisconsin Early Literacy Screener results by district and school.
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2026
A legislative letter to DPI Superintendent Underly; my question to Governor Evers; and a practitioner’s view that Wisconsin will see the impact of Act 20 on test scores within six to eight years, based on other states’ experience.
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2026Mississippi
The New York Times publishes a district‑by‑district test‑score lookup, and Nicholas Kristof, in an accompanying column, reports that a Black fourth grader in Mississippi is now two and a half times as likely to be proficient in reading as one in California. In May, Bill Maher carries the comparison to Real Time: “Mississippi is kicking our a‑‑ in education and for way less money” — 9th in fourth‑grade reading to California’s 37th.
Sources, methods and caveats for every claim on this page → anthropic gemini grok