The education story of the year has been the “Southern Surge.” An intrepid group of southern states have led the nation in post-pandemic recovery. In a decade, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the nation on fourth-grade reading scores, despite remaining the poorest state.
According to Harvard’s 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard, Louisiana is the only state to recover to 2019 achievement levels in both reading and math, while Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in fourth-grade math alone. All other states continue to lag prior achievement levels.
Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of commonsense reforms: early literacy laws that require the use of phonics, the tightening of retention and promotion policies, universal literacy screeners in early grades, and rigorous curricula. But another factor may be these states’ strict disciplinary policies. The states seeing the greatest gains academically are also the ones doing the most to bring order and stability to their schools.
Read more at City Journal.
