MISSISSIPPI MEH: Does anyone give a flying fark...

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

...about our nation's kids? Long ago and far away, the Associated Press offered a lengthy news report about an important topic.

Quickly, let's amend that statement:

The topic of the AP report is very important as a matter of theory. In practice, it isn't clear than anyone actually cares about the topic in question. Also, it isn't clear that anyone is prepared to offer a competent analysis of the claims under review.

With those corrections in place, let's move quickly ahead. 

The report was written by the AP's Sharon Lurye. The report appeared on May 17. The AP's headline said this:

‘Mississippi miracle': Kids’ reading scores have soared in Deep South states

According to the lengthy AP report, "reading scores have soared" in recent years in three Gulf Coast states. In Mississippi, the test score gains have been so large that a pleasing term has been getting thrown around, in that AP headline and elsewhere:

LURIE (5/17/23): [T]he country has taken notice of what some have called the Mississippi miracle. Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Virginia are among the states that have recently adopted some of the same policies. As Mississippi climbed [in] the rankings, the Barksdale Institute, an influential organization in literacy policy in the state, got phone calls from about two dozen states.

The institute’s CEO, Kelly Butler, said she tells them there’s no secret to the strategy.

“We know how to teach reading,” she said. “We just have to do it everywhere.”

"All three states have trained thousands of teachers in the so-called science of reading," Lurye went on to say. To Lurye's credit, the term "so-called" was hers.

Alabama and Louisiana were cited in the AP report, but the state of Mississippi was the obvious star.  In Mississippi, reading scores have soared to the point where a certain M-bomb is being tossed around. 

As we noted in the weeks preceding a recent surgery, black fourth graders in Mississippi now seem to be outperforming their counterparts from around the nation in reading by upwards of one whole academic year. Ditto for Mississippi's lower income fourth graders, of whatever race.

Mississippi is a high-poverty, low social services state. As everyone knows, the state occupies a spot at the very heart of this nation's racial history, a history both brutal and tragic.

Now, Mississippi has reportedly found the way to produce an educational miracle among its deserving black (and lower income) kids. By any rational assessment, this counts as an important claim about a very important topic.

That AP report appeared in the middle of May. Before that recent surgery, we spent a great deal of time examining the data upon which its claims are based.

As a matter of theory and widespread pretense, the AP's various claims are extremely important. But in the months which have passed since the AP report appeared, we Americans have had a chance to assess how much we actually care about the topic under review in that AP report.

It has now been almost four months since that AP report appeared. In the months which have passed, we can find no sign that the New York Times has ever produced a news report about this allegedly important topic.

We find no sign of any such report by the Washington Post. In fact, we're able to find no sign of any news report on this topic by any major American newspaper. 

As for the "favorite reporters and friends" who serve as our tribunes on MSNBC, we know of no time when that AP report has ever been mentioned at all.

Does anyone give a flying felafel about the nation's black kids? Does anyone within our own blue tribe care about such kids?

Our own blue tribe has been striking that pose for at least the past sixty years. By now, does anyone care about those kids, or about anything else?

Tomorrow: Out in the city of angels, Michael Hiltzik speaks