Analysis: The Renaissance of American literacy education required going back to the basics

Mississippi fourth graders are top in the nation for improving their reading and math scores, jumping from 49th and 50th in 2012 to 9th and 16th in 2024 for reading and math, respectively – a growth many have termed the “Mississippi Miracle.”

That miracle, which is due in large part to reintroducing phonics-based instruction, has since spread to dozens more states. Tennessee, for example, sat at 35th in fourth grade literacy scores in 2022, but jumped 12 places by 2024, according to the 2025 Nation’s Report Card from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Nation’s Report Card and literacy levels

The NAEP’s 2025 Nation Report Card shows fourth grade reading levels across the country remain two points below the pre-pandemic score of 2020 but three points higher than the most recent (2022) report. The NAEP measures educational success on a 0-500 standardized test-type scale, with the national average for fourth grade students at 214 – two points lower than recorded in 2022 and five points below the pre-pandemic score of 219.

Mississippi’s improvement from second to last in 2013 to top 10 in 2024 marked the state as an example for others for how to advance children’s literacy across the nation.

The 2013 Mississippi “Literacy-Based Promotion Act” ensured that students passing kindergarten through third grades have actually met the requirements for those grade levels. An amendment to the LBPA in 2016 added a required “individual reading plan” (IRP) to record each student’s literacy education and progress. The amendment also required teachers to use research-based literacy education techniques, including “the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.” Phonics-based reading teaches students individual letters and pairings to make different sounds.

“This trend has received national attention, and representatives from other states have remarked that they are looking closely at Mississippi’s methods to see if there are lessons learned that could be applied in their home states,” Bailey Shelton Ray, Director of Communications at Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, told Heartlander News in a statement.

Tennessee’s NAEP score for 2024 was 215 – only one point above the national average – but it was the first time the state’s average surpassed the national average since 1992, when levels were first recorded.

Although Tennessee does not explicitly cite Mississippi as the inspiration behind its legislation, the state’s TLSA legislation includes many of the changes as Mississippi’s 2013 law, such as reverting from a “balanced literacy” approach to the scientifically proven phonics-based approach.

Phonics vs. balanced literacy 

The debate surrounding balanced literacy and phonics-based education for reading dates back to the 1800s with Horace Mann, the “father of the public-school movement.”

Mann believed a student did not need to learn the individual sounds of letters but instead should memorize whole words, so the child would learn the meanings of words without the distraction of individual letters. In contrast, the school of phonics argues a child needs to be taught that words are made up of parts and that when put together in varying ways, can sound different and have new meanings.

This launched the reading war of phonics versus whole language, an approach later known as balanced literacy. The debate amplified as time passed, leading up to the 2000 National Reading Panel (NRP) report. The report demonstrated that the most effective literacy instruction is teaching children to use phonemes – the smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that can change the meaning of a word.

The report studied kindergarten-to-sixth grade phonics and phoneme manipulation, showing that phonics improved spelling and oral reading for older students, but its comprehension benefit was really a kindergarten and first grade phenomenon in the data. This data strongly challenged the common whole language teaching practices.

However, balanced literacy still dominated the early 2000s. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed this education method through the school districts, a decision that repackaged the whole language method as balanced literacy but did not change the actual curriculum.

In a 2019 survey, 72% of teachers said they used balanced literacy as their teaching technique for literacy in the classroom. Mississippi ended that form of education with its 2013 legislation, catapulting it ahead of every other state.

Tennessee follows Mississippi, redirects funding

The Tennessee Literacy Success Act (TLSA), passed in 2021, requires the state to return to phonics-based “foundational literacy skills” instruction for kindergarten through third grade students. TLSA also requires schools to hold universal reading tests three times annually and to train teachers in reading science, among other requirements.

Tennessee fourth grade students’ literacy proficiency increased from 32.1% to 46.4% from the 2020-21 school year to the 2023-24 school year, and students consistently performed several points higher than the same cohort did in third grade, the year before. With still less than half of fourth graders proficient in reading relative to the grade level standards, however, TLSAalso provided that struggling students may be required to repeat the grade level until proficiency is acquired.

Tennessee also recently passed the Better Spending, Better Schools Act of 2026, which will go into effect in October, as another step toward bettering the school spending systems. The state has typically maintained relatively low average for expenses per-pupil but spending has increased significantly in the past 10 years, Tennessee state Rep. Michele Reneau told Heartlander News in a statement

“If a state or district is achieving better results while spending less, we need to know whether that success stems from high-impact classroom instruction or from shifts in measurement,” Reneau said. “On the flip side, if funding increases, we must ensure those investments go directly toward proven academic drivers – like early literacy, high-dosage tutoring, and competitive teacher pay – rather than expanding administrative bloat.”

How school funding impacts literacy education

Federal funding in support of literacy education began in 1965 with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which President Barack Obama later updated under his 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act amendment to the original 1965 ESEA.

The ESEA granted $28.9 billion in 2026 for the eight provisions covered by the bill, with most of the money going to underserved school districts and disadvantaged students. Even though federal and statewide funding has increased, NAEP literacy proficiency scores from 2015 to 2017 remained essentially flat, with only 37% of fourth graders scoring at or above proficient in reading.

During the 2013-15 school years, a new national curriculum, the Common Core, entered classrooms. This curriculum includes some phonological education, but phonics largely disappears after first grade.

Between 2017 and 2019, reading scores fell further: fourth grade reading dropped to 220, and, by 2024, the national average had fallen to 214.

But the state of Mississippi wasn’t the only outlier rejecting balanced reading. Homeschool families also resisted the trends of public education.

Homeschooling tactics applied to the classroom

Homeschool students statistically perform better than those in institutional schools due to the curriculum differences, according to Dr. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). Ray cited more than 60% of studies that demonstrate this performance comparison.

“From my experience in education and training, I recommend that parents read aloud to their children in close proximity in a room, or with children on their laps or next to them on a couch,” Ray said. “Parents should do this from the earliest point that the child will sit or play with toys and listen – some as young as one year of age. Then use even the simplest thoughtful phonics instruction.”

These tactics are now returning to classrooms.

On the path toward change

Missouri’s 2025 SB 68 bill requires school reforms and a return to phonics, following the footsteps of Mississippi and Tennessee.

At the national level, the Improving America’s Literacy Act, introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, would make school funding and curriculum a nationwide concern, ensuring that funding is directed toward students and teachers.

Since 2013, federal and state education spending has increased by 56% to approximately $16,700 per student. Even with the increase in funding, national reading scores have declined six points, according to Edunomics Lab research. The Improving America’s Literacy Act would redirect federal funding to evidence-based literacy instruction but would not change how states allocate their education funding.

“In the midst of a national literacy crisis, states have shown that investing in phonics can help boost reading skills,” Sen. Schatz said in a press release. “Our bill will promote the use of phonics in schools across the country so kids can develop strong reading skills and be set up for future success.”

Broader tracking by organizations such as Education Week, ExcelinEd, and the Education Commission of the States indicates that a majority of states have enacted at least some science-of-reading or phonics-aligned legislation or policies since Mississippi’s 2013 reforms.

These measures commonly address teacher preparation, instructional materials, screening, and interventions and many have drawn bipartisan support. States that have adopted multi-element packages similar to Mississippi’s model include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia.