It is rarely ideal to hold children back a grade once they start school, but when it seems necessary, the earlier the retention the better.
Mississippi, with an education policy that insists on reading proficiency by the end of third grade, understands that.
Not every state does. As reported recently by a national news collaborative that included Mississippi Today, some states mostly wait until high school to hold students back. In Hawaii, about 1 in 10 freshmen in public high schools had to repeat ninth grade in the 2021-22 school year, the latest year for which national data is available. In Washington state, school districts waited even longer, until 12th grade, to come down hardest on students who are failing.
Few education professionals think that’s a good idea, since the older students are when they have to repeat a grade, the more likely they are to give up on school. Waiting too late to hold a student back replaces one problem (social promotion) with another (dropouts).
In 2013, when Mississippi adopted a major package of education reforms, lawmakers listened to those who urged the state to follow Florida’s example. A major plank in the package was the so-called “third grade gate,” which mandated that students be reading at grade level by the end of third grade or they would not be promoted to fourth grade.
Predictions that the state’s public schools would be overwhelmed with high rates of third-grade retention did not materialize. One reason was the law provided for second and third chances to pass the state’s reading test. Another was the exemptions provided to students with learning disabilities or for whom English is a second language.
The main factor, though, was that Mississippi did not adopt the attitude that the shame of “flunking” third grade would be enough to motivate students to learn. Instead, the schools proactively identified those who were behind, starting in kindergarten, and provided them with remedial help. If they still ended up being held back, more resources were put into trying to help them catch up. And the state, with the assistance of the former Barksdale Reading Institute, got better at training teachers in the proven methods of teaching reading.
The resulting improvement in reading proficiency has been impressive. Many have called it “miraculous.” The year before “third grade gate” went into effect, Mississippi finished second-worst in the nation in fourth grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for gauging academic achievement. The state has rapidly moved up since, finishing ninth in the rankings in 2024, the most recent year for which the NAEP results have been published.
It’s not just in reading that Mississippi has improved. During the same time period, Mississippi’s fourth graders jumped from 50th to 16th in math.
Notably, the improvement in fourth grade has been across nearly all the socioeconomic subcategories in which academic performance has lagged historically. Mississippi finishes at or near the top in reading and math for African American students, Hispanic students and low-income students when compared to their peers.
A state once scorned as an educational abyss is now being studied and copied by others that have fallen behind.
Although the imitation is flattering, there is widespread acknowledgment among Mississippi educators and policymakers that more needs to be done. It’s particularly worrisome that the gains made in the early grades don’t appear to hold in the later grades. To address the drop-off, the Legislature adopted this year a literacy initiative for the upper elementary grades that is modeled on the 2013 reforms, with one exception. There’s no mandatory retention for students who are performing below grade level.
That’s understandable, since the research indicates that flunking students after a certain age is counterproductive. Still, it will be interesting to see whether a policy that’s “all carrot and no stick” can be as effective.
