Mississippi
Mississippi’s dramatic fourth-grade reading gains are turning heads. Here’s how New Mexico is — and isn’t — following suit.
![Mississippi’s dramatic fourth-grade reading gains are turning heads. Here’s how New Mexico is — and isn’t — following suit. Mississippi’s dramatic fourth-grade reading gains are turning heads. Here’s how New Mexico is — and isn’t — following suit.](https://d21yqjvcoayho7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/22/Mississippi-learning-1.jpg)
“Thank God for Mississippi.”
For a few years, that saying captured New Mexico’s unsavory rivalry with Mississippi, a state that usually appeared to avoid wasting New Mexico from coming in final when score college students’ educational proficiency ranges.
However lately, it isn’t used a lot anymore. Over the previous a number of years, Mississippi’s elementary scores on The Nation’s Report Card have steadily gone up, with the Magnolia State now rating across the mid-30s in fourth grade proficiency ranges.
New Mexico, then again, appeared to hit a wall, and the state has lingered across the backside of the nation’s proficiency charges on even the latest nationwide report card.
For some, the 2 states’ differing academic trajectories over time pose easy questions: Why can Mississippi enhance, when New Mexico can’t appear to? And what are they doing that we aren’t?
But it surely’s not fairly so simple as precisely following a Mississippi blueprint — and although New Mexico has been engaged on among the issues they did for years, change doesn’t occur in a single day.
“They rolled out their initiative in 2014, and in 2019 is when Mississippi really noticed their educational good points,” stated Severo Martinez, director of New Mexico’s Public Training Division’s Literacy and Humanities. “It took that 5 years to get academics skilled up, the place college students really had an educator that was outfitted.”
Literacy
To make sure, Mississippi hasn’t utterly turned the ship round. In eighth-grade achievement, the state nonetheless hovers round forty eighth and forty ninth within the nation.
However in fourth grade studying — a crucial juncture the place consultants say college students cease studying to learn and begin studying to be taught — Mississippi has soared to the thirty third spot in studying proficiency, and thirty seventh in math.
An enormous a part of that, former Mississippi State Superintendent of Training Carey Wright instructed the Journal, has been a concerted effort to indoctrinate academics within the science of studying.
“What we had been discovering is that not all people was popping out of our universities figuring out train the science of studying,” Wright, who retired in June, stated. “So our skilled improvement, 12 months after 12 months after 12 months after 12 months, actually targeted on precisely that — what are the ability units that academics have to know, have the ability to do, with a view to get youngsters to learn?”
That’s a technique New Mexico has already labored with Mississippi to repeat.
In 2019, lawmakers handed laws mandating all elementary faculty academics be skilled in structured literacy, which frequently comes within the type of skilled improvement that breaks down how individuals be taught to learn.
The flagship coaching in New Mexico is named Language Necessities for Lecturers of Studying and Spelling (LETRS), and it’s already within the strategy of being rolled out.
Thus far, about 800 educators have totally accomplished the LETRS coaching, Martinez stated, declaring that it takes about two years to take action.
However about 6,000 educators are enrolled — together with all kindergarten via third grade academics, Martinez stated. Finally, all elementary educators will take part.
Whereas New Mexico has unfold LETRS to a lot of its educators, it’s nonetheless early to inform whether or not it’s working, Martinez stated.
“It does take time,” he stated, pointing to an implementation chart that signifies first graders ought to start seeing outcomes subsequent faculty 12 months.
However Wright additionally stated that’s the way it performed out in Mississippi, saying it took a number of years for his or her outcomes to start out rolling in.
“You’ve obtained to stay to it,” she stated. “It’s obtained to be one thing that’s carried out once more, and once more, and repeatedly, since you preserve getting new crops of youngsters, and you retain getting new crops of academics.”
The Mississippi Division of Training, Wright stated, additionally put literacy coaches in place all through the state to assist faculties with the bottom studying scores get on monitor. Martinez stated New Mexico is doing the identical factor.
Presently, there are 23 literacy coaches deployed all through the state, however Martinez stated the PED plans to double the variety of faculties receiving such specialised help over the approaching 12 months.
Wright additionally highlighted Mississippi’s investments in early childhood training, saying that helped higher put together youngsters to learn to learn. New Mexico can also be emphasizing that, with a latest annual report from the Early Childhood Training and Care Division indicating some 66% of 4-year-olds are “completed” in literacy.
In the latest iteration of the state Home’s spending invoice, which was handed on Thursday, $8 million could be put aside to assist districts and constitution faculties implement LETRS, and one other $13.5 million could be put aside for early literacy and studying help, like studying coaches.
Evaluating states
There are all the time different issues when evaluating two states.
For instance, New Mexico and Mississippi college students and their households face comparable charges of poverty; round 79% and 75%, respectively, are Title I. However there are extra English learners within the Land of Enchantment — nearly 18% of New Mexico college students — which means there are arguably totally different hurdles to leap.
Including to the variations between the 2 states is that almost all college students in New Mexico are Hispanic, whereas there are extra Black or African American pupils in Mississippi than another ethnicity.
And there are vastly extra Indigenous college students in New Mexico, which means that they face their very own units of challenges, together with much less entry to academic facilities near dwelling and shortage in Native-language academics.
Pueblos have constantly advocated for extra assets to show their very own college students their very own Native languages, arguing it’s essential in preserving heritage and declaring that Indigenous instructors are those with the experience within the cultural backgrounds of Native American English learners in addition to in English proficiency.
![Cb111522m](https://d21yqjvcoayho7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/22/cb111522m-1200x798.jpg)
“Pueblos and tribes have been compelled to combine into Western techniques of training for … over 50 years,” All Pueblo Council of Governors Government Director Teran Villa stated. “It has had a devastating impression (on) Pueblos’ languages.”
That’s considered one of many components that make some query the worth of evaluating such totally different states.
“We’ve all the time puzzled whether or not the comparability with Mississippi is actually that applicable,” Anja Rudiger, a member of the Tribal Training Alliance, stated. “There’s actually not all that a lot in widespread — poverty charges, clearly — however as regard to the precise belongings that youngsters carry to studying and all of the cultural richness … I don’t know if these comparisons purchase us that a lot.”
That every one being stated, Martinez insisted that LETRS coaching accounts for all college students, together with those that don’t converse English as a primary language. The PED web site features a course geared towards “English Learners and all culturally and linguistically various learners.”
“There must be no impediment,” Martinez stated. “If it’s a bilingual pupil, if it’s a pupil that comes from a low socioeconomic background … if we’re educating the science of studying, this could impression literacy proficiency in any college students.”
Wright agreed literacy packages may be universally useful, declaring that academic outcomes in her state didn’t simply enhance for the historically top-performing college students. Common scores on The Nation’s Report Card present college students who’re economically deprived and people who aren’t each usually improved over time, although those that are economically deprived nonetheless usually achieved decrease common scores than the others.
“That was simply proof optimistic — it’s not your prime children getting higher, it’s all people getting higher,” she stated.
Retention
In 2014, as a part of the act that established literacy helps, Mississippi additionally started requiring that third graders be held again in the event that they aren’t proficient in studying — a measure Wright pointed to as a contributing consider her state’s fourth-grade meteoric rise.
“Folks anticipated much more children to be retained than had been,” Wright stated. “That’s an actual tribute to the academics, as a result of I feel that after the academics had been skilled within the science of studying and knew train studying, annually our youngsters simply saved getting stronger and stronger.”
Wright pointed to analysis from Boston College discovering that early cohorts of scholars who had been held again after Mississippi’s retention regulation was handed in 2013, in actual fact improved their educational outcomes, and didn’t see an impression on their absences.
However requiring that college students be held again isn’t more likely to occur right here.
![1952386](https://d21yqjvcoayho7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/22/1952386-215x300.jpg)
Presently, New Mexico first via seventh graders who aren’t academically proficient by the top of the varsity 12 months aren’t required to be held again if their mother and father or guardians say they need their youngster to maneuver on to the following grade, except a pupil has moved on to the following grade regardless of not being proficient and stays that method throughout the second 12 months.
For years, some lawmakers and members of former Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration pushed payments and guidelines that will have mandatorily held again third graders who, by the top of the varsity 12 months, weren’t studying at grade stage.
However 12 months after 12 months, these proposals failed or had been repealed.
Traditionally, opponents of the measure have argued that it’s not honest to carry college students again primarily based on one check in a single topic, that it isn’t as efficient in catching college students up as different practices and that it will increase dropout charges.
“Adults can take steps that make sense to them that don’t make a lot sense to children,” stated Mary Parr-Sánchez, president of the Nationwide Training Affiliation New Mexico union. “Sure, it might assist them to have the ability to rating proficient the following 12 months or the 12 months after that,” however “we don’t know, long-term.”
Wright acknowledged that college students who had been held again wanted extra help throughout their second go-around to guarantee that it did assist them, together with specialised one-on-one time with academics.
“The kids that had been retained, what we did do with the third grade academics was present them with a unique type of skilled improvement, as a result of the very last thing youngsters that had been retained want … was simply one other 12 months in third grade,” Wright stated. “They wanted one thing totally different, they wanted a stronger tutorial program.”
Nonetheless, Parr-Sánchez identified that holding college students again carries the chance that they are going to internalize that they’re a failure and disconnect from faculty altogether, and stated it’s extra essential to create a system that helps them succeed.
“We simply want to have a look at a holistic system,” Parr-Sánchez stated. “We have to put (assets) into it and help individuals, moderately than punish them.”
In a written assertion to the Journal, interim Training Secretary Mariana Padilla identified that generally, college students aren’t assembly grade-level requirements due to conditions past their management — homelessness, shifting round loads, and the like.
Arsenio Romero, the superintendent of Los Lunas Colleges and a New Mexico State College regent,…Arsenio Romero named head of New Mexico Public Training Division
“Analysis reveals that grade retention can do extra hurt than good, together with negatively impacting college students’ vanity, peer relationships, faculty belonging and academic outcomes,” she stated. “Having one-size-fits-all insurance policies about necessary retention solely punishes college students as a result of their holistic wants weren’t met.”
She pointed to the state’s structured literacy initiatives as the best way ahead in really serving to the scholars who wrestle essentially the most.
However in fact, that’ll take time to occur.
“Mississippi achievement in studying … it goes up, and so due to that, we’re copying their technique to get the science of studying in elementary faculties,” Padilla’s predecessor, former Training Secretary Kurt Steinhaus, instructed the Journal final 12 months. “We’re possibly 10 years behind, however we’re on our third 12 months now.”
“We’re getting there.”
LETRS, by the numbers
Language Necessities for Lecturers of Studying and Spelling (LETRS) is New Mexico’s essential method of imparting the science of studying to educators. It does so by arming them with the talents to show studying — together with phonics and vocabulary — whereas additionally informing them in regards to the mind science behind it. Right here’s a have a look at LETRS, by the numbers.
- $42 MILLION: What the state has invested in literacy initiatives as much as this 12 months
- $21.5 MILLION: What the state plans to spend over the approaching fiscal 12 months
- 6,000: The variety of educators enrolled
- 800: Educators have accomplished LETRS
- 145 hours: The hours it takes to finish the coaching
- ?: Particular person faculty districts determine compensate academics for the coaching, although the PED gives steering on spend among the cash
Literacy disaster in NM
The Albuquerque Journal, together with KOAT-TV and KKOB radio, proceed to spotlight the literacy disaster in New Mexico, which continues to rank on the backside in fourth-graders’ proficiency charges. KOAT is that includes its personal report on Mississippi on the 6 p.m. information program Wednesday, Feb. 22., and each KOAT and Journal reporters might be company this week on KKOB to discuss what they’ve realized.
Extra tales within the sequence:
Low literacy linked to New Mexico’s poverty
New Mexico’s economically deprived youngsters are far much less more likely to meet studying proficiency requirements than…
NM takes purpose at achievement hole
Training funding will get enhance; elevated tax credit goal poverty…
NM searches for solutions to ‘Why Johnny Cannot Learn’
A yearlong venture by media companions goals to supply perception…
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Mississippi
Arizona State eyes first win against an SEC opponent vs. Mississippi State
Mississippi State at Arizona State, Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET (ESPN)
BetMGM College Football Odds: Arizona State by 6 1/2.
Series record: First meeting.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Arizona State and Mississippi State both had dominant wins in the season-opening weekend and now have a tougher challenge when they face each other on Saturday night. The Sun Devils are trying to build off an impressive 48-7 win over Wyoming and prove they might be a factor in the Big 12 race. Arizona State has never beaten an SEC opponent. Mississippi State plays its second game under new coach Jeff Lebby. The Bulldogs beat Eastern Kentucky 56-7 in their season opener..
KEY MATCHUP
Mississippi State QB Blake Shapen vs. the Arizona State defense. The Sun Devils scored a touchdown on the second play of their opener when Zyrus Fiaseu picked off a pass and returned it to the end zone. It was one of two interceptions on the day for Arizona State. Shapen had a great debut against Eastern Kentucky but will face a much tougher defense on Saturday.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Mississippi State: Shapen had a terrific first game with the Bulldogs, throwing for 247 yards and three touchdowns while also running for 44 yards and a TD against Eastern Kentucky. The 6-foot-1 senior played the previous three college seasons at Baylor with mixed success. Shapen has thrown a TD pass in 12 consecutive games dating to this time at Baylor in 2022.
Arizona State: RB Cam Skattebo led a balanced rushing attack against Wyoming, gaining 49 yards and scoring a touchdown. Skattebo was a do-it-all player for Arizona State last year, spending time at quarterback, running back and receiver. The Sun Devils might not need him to be as versatile this season, but he’s still a threat from just about anywhere on the field.
FACTS & FIGURES
Mississippi State had six different players score touchdowns against Eastern Kentucky. … The Bulldogs’ 93.7 passing grade in the opener was the second-best mark in all of the FBS, trailing only Purdue, according to Pro Football Focus. … Mississippi State’s Kevin Coleman Jr. returned five punts for 117 yards last week. … Arizona State was credited with just two missed tackles on defense in the opener, tied for the third-lowest tally among FBS schools. … Skattebo is 270 rushing yards away from reaching 3,000 in his career. He is 342 all-purpose yards away from reaching 4,000 and 202 receiving yards away from reaching 1,000.
___
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Mississippi
How Mississippi State football is preparing for Arizona State weather, late kickoff
![How Mississippi State football is preparing for Arizona State weather, late kickoff How Mississippi State football is preparing for Arizona State weather, late kickoff](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/09/03/PNAS/75060541007-usatsi-24129028.jpg?auto=webp&crop=5472,3078,x0,y0&format=pjpg&width=1200)
STARKVILLE — Mississippi State football is preparing to play a team that, at least through one game, looks vastly improved from last season.
Coach Jeff Lebby admitted on Monday, and Bulldog players have noticed it too after Arizona State (1-0) thumped Wyoming 48-7 in its opener.
MSU (1-0) must also factor in the late kickoff that is scheduled Saturday (9:30 p.m. CT, ESPN) at Mountain America Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Mississippi is hot, but so is Arizona — a different kind of hot, too.
Modifications and remedies are being made, such as the team leaving Starkville on Thursday instead of how it normally would on a Friday for a Saturday game.
“For our guys, just knowing exactly what we are getting into,” Lebby said. “We continue to talk about that through yesterday and this morning and (are) having those conversations to understand what it’s going to look like late in the week. We got to do a great job from a preparation standpoint of how we are hydrating, how we are eating and how we are resting to give us the ability to go on the road on this flight and be able to be at our best Saturday night.”
Just this week, Phoenix broke a record with its 100th straight day of 100-degree temperatures. According to AccuWeather, the high on Saturday in Tempe will be 107 degrees with a low of 86. The temperature should dip to around 91 near kickoff with a humidity of 24%.
“Coach Lebby has already been harping on that,” tight end Justin Ball said. “We’ve already been hydrating and making sure we are getting rest every single day. We leave on Thursday, so we already talked about the plan to make sure we are hydrating the entire plane ride there, making sure when we get there we get acclimated as quickly as you can and just staying together. Making sure we’re focused, make sure we keep the goal first and then execute the game plan.”
MORE: Jeff Lebby says Mississippi State football didn’t put on a good enough show. Here’s how he’s wrong
Mississippi State played well the last time it played in Arizona
The Bulldogs played Arizona in Tucson two seasons ago. They squandered a pedestrian Wildcats team 39-17. Kickoff for that game was at 8 p.m. PST though the temperature was 84 degrees at game time.
Not many players remain on Mississippi State’s roster from that 2022 season. But the ones who are, like linebacker Nic Mitchell, can benefit from the experience and also share it with teammates.
“We know it’s going to be a long flight, so we know we got to be hydrated,” Mitchell said. “It gives people experience that have done it before and they can tell the young guys how it’s going to be in the flight, how you got to hydrate and stuff like that.”
Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.
Mississippi
Playing for Mississippi State not an option for Arizona State back Kyson ‘Sipp’ Brown
Arizona State forces 3 turnovers in win over Wyoming to start 2024
All offseason, coach Kenny Dillingham preached getting turnovers. Forty seconds into the season’s first game, the defense produced its first one.
Sophomore running back Kyson Brown is one of the faster players on the Arizona State football team. But Brown seems to have a little more pep in his step this week. Why? Well, the Sun Devils (1-0) are set to take on Mississippi State (1-0) at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Mountain America Stadium.
Sure an SEC opponent is enough to get any athlete fired up. But the 6-foot, 200-pounder hails from Tupelo, Mississippi, which is where he got his nickname, Sipp. Tupelo is 67 miles north of the Mississippi State campus in Starkville that Sipp has visited a handful of times.
“I have family, growing up they were all Mississipp State fans and some Ole Miss fans,” he said. “Some of my family are debating whether they want to cheer for me or not. It’s going to be good. A lot of hometown friends. Got a couple guys I went to high school with there. It’s going to be good seeing those guys and hopefully, we compete at a good level and get the W.”
Brown, a mechanical engineering major, is enrolled in ASU’s Barret honors program, He emerged as one of the team’s most improved players. He saw some time on special teams as a true freshman in 2023 and has set himself up for a bigger role, although the ASU backfield has a lot of depth.
In the last week’s 48-7 win over Wyoming, Brown pitched in with six rushing attempts for 25 yards and two receptions for 73 yards. His 68-yard touchdown reception was the longest play from scrimmage that ASU had on the night.
“It felt amazing just to get back in the end zone again,” Brown said. “You come out of high school, you know I’m used to being in the end zone every game, all the time. That play, I knew — once I made the first guy miss — I knew I wasn’t going to let anybody catch me.”
Brown lived in Mississippi until moving to Lancaster, Texas, outside of Dallas, after his sophomore year of high school. He sat out junior year after the transfer. As a senior he averaged 9.5 yards per carry, finishing with 707 yards and 11 touchdowns on 74 carries while adding 14 receptions for 168 yards and two touchdowns.
Sitting out his junior year hurt his recruiting, but he still had notable offers from Purdue, Missouri and Houston. The balance of his options were lower-profile schools. Mississippi State didn’t offer.
He is happy with the end result. A place on the ASU football roster. In the offseason, he worked on his agility, flexibility and catching the ball, which was evident in his recent scoring play.
“We all have the big-play potential,” he said of his fellow running backs. “I feel my role is to make plays, wherever they put me be able to perform.”
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