11/03/25
Learning Together: A Mississippi Marathon, Not Miracle
The Opportunity Trust’s fourth annual Fall Community Dinner was electric—packed room, high-energy conversations, and a shared determination to raise the bar for St. Louis students. This year’s focus: what many call the “Mississippi Miracle.”. Mississippi’s rank in reading scores rose from 49th in 2013 to 9th in 2024, and math from 50th to 16th, marking one of the steepest climbs in the country. But as keynote speaker Rachel Canter of Mississippi First made clear, the story wasn’t a miracle. It was the result of two decades of aligned policy, bipartisan leadership, and unwavering belief in every child’s potential.
The Opportunity Trust convened this discussion to translate those lessons into action for Missouri—because with the right strategy, partnership, and accountability, sustained gains are possible here too. The evening reinforced The Opportunity Trust’s role as a catalyst: bringing together school leaders, civic partners, and funders to learn from what works, invest in what matters, and accelerate Missouri’s path toward becoming a national leader in student success.
The Proof Is in the Progress
“At least there’s Mississippi,” was the refrain two decades ago, when the state consistently ranked at the bottom of national assessments. Rachel Canter, founder of Mississippi First—a nonprofit dedicated to advancing education policy and practice—painted a vivid picture of that era: a school system weighed down by a narrative that it was too poor, too rural, and too broken to improve. When she launched Mississippi First in 2008, her goal was to change that story by organizing a coalition of educators, policymakers, and community members who believed Mississippi’s children deserved better.
Canter described how that coalition began tackling the root causes of underperformance—outdated standards, lack of teacher support, and minimal accountability—one policy at a time. It was unglamorous, slow-moving work that demanded persistence and trust. But, she noted, that’s how progress happens: not through miracles, but through momentum built over years of aligned effort.
Today, Mississippi’s fourth graders have leaped into the top tier of U.S. performance. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Mississippi’s average fourth-grade reading score climbed to 219 in 2024, above the national average. In math, students posted an average of 239, two points higher than the U.S. average. The improvement has been steady and sustained. By contrast, only 27 % of Missouri fourth graders scored proficient or higher in reading in 2024, down from more than a third in 2019.
How Mississippi Changed Its Story
Canter didn’t sugarcoat the work. “It wasn’t like we passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act and voilà, magical things happened,” she said. “We had to raise our standards, align our assessments, and change our accountability model. We expected so little of kids — why are we surprised they don’t know anything when they take a national assessment?”
The transformation began in the late 2000s, when Mississippi rewrote its standards, trained teachers in the science of reading, and embedded early-literacy coaches across districts. The state also reframed how it saw educators.
Canter recalled, “When the State Department of Education started to think of itself as a service organization and not a compliance organization, it completely shifted how they interacted with school districts.” This sentiment drew applause from the audience.
Those shifts yielded measurable results. Between 2022 and 2024, the share of Mississippi fourth graders scoring proficient in math rose from 32% to 38%. Even when national averages dipped after the pandemic, Mississippi’s students held steady, proof that improvement can endure when systems, support, and accountability stay aligned.
And while policies mattered, people mattered more. “You’re always going to have people who don’t believe that you can do anything,” Canter said. “But there are always going to be people who are going to be with you. We’re going to do a few things, we’re going to do them really well, and we’re going to do them for a really long time — because that’s how long it takes to make change.”
Missouri’s Moment
Missouri’s own literacy reforms, including Senate Bill 681, draw heavily from Mississippi’s example, a connection built through years of collaboration, shared research, and deep learning within our network. This gathering brought together educators, policymakers, and advocates who believe that early literacy isn’t just another initiative; it’s the foundation for every other form of student success.
The evening’s discussion sparked powerful questions from education leaders eager to move beyond surface-level reform. One participant asked, “What do you do when DESE… needs additional capacity to truly support school districts?”—followed by another that cut to the heart of the matter: “How do we shift the narrative from compliance to genuine service?”
Those questions reflected the urgency shared across the room: how to build a state education system that shifts to a service orientation versus compliance , and creates the conditions where every student—and every educator—can thrive.
Still, as Canter reminded the room, passing a law is only the beginning. “If you focus on the pieces that feel good and not on any of the pieces that feel uncomfortable, you’re not going to get the feel-good results that you want,” she said. “It can’t at the end of the day be accountability for nine-year-olds and nobody else.”
That reminder resonated with everyone in the room. Now the focus is on the harder, quieter work of implementation, aligning systems, supporting teachers, and staying consistent long enough for change to take root. Mississippi’s story proves what’s possible when belief and persistence outlast politics. Our challenge now is to do the same here: to keep showing up, keep learning, and keep pushing until every child in Missouri can read, reason, and thrive.
Join us in this work—because lasting change in education doesn’t happen by chance; it happens by choice.
