Childhood And Education #17: Is Our Children Reading
Zvi's AI Roundups · Zvi Mowshowitz · 2026-05-11
Zvi Mowshowitz surveys evidence that Mississippi and other Southern US states dramatically improved student reading outcomes by mandating phonics instruction, teacher training, and accountability systems, arguing that reading failure is a deliberate policy choice and the proven reform playbook is straightforwardly replicable.
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Extraction
Topics: education-policyreading-instructionphonicsmastery-learningus-education-reform
Claims
- Mississippi's phonics-based reforms have resulted in the state now outperforming most other US states in fourth-grade reading, not merely catching up to the national average.
- The successful Southern Surge reform playbook consists of four pillars: phonics curriculum adoption, teacher training on that curriculum, multi-level accountability systems, and third-grade retention for non-readers.
- A widely-circulated critique claiming Mississippi's gains are a statistical artifact of third-grade retention policy contains factual errors and methodological flaws — including treating retained students as if they vanish rather than retaking the test a year later.
- Similar phonics and knowledge-centered curriculum reforms in England moved it from declining international rankings to 4th in the world in reading.
- The decline in leisure reading among students and college-level book-reading reflects competition from devices and a focus/attention issue, not a literacy failure.
Key quotes
Reading is the most fundamental thing in education. If you can read, you can do and learn everything else. If you can't read, well, you're screwed.
Illiteracy has been proven a policy choice, and all the extra money we spend on other things has proven wasted.
If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools.