{"id":62785,"date":"2026-02-10T12:42:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62785"},"modified":"2026-02-10T12:42:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:42:57","slug":"yes-children-can-learn-to-read-and-do-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62785","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Children Can Learn To Read And Do Math"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/09\/opinion\/red-states-good-schools.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K1A.hGAi.QpbdtKzj51Ke&amp;smid=url-share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times<\/a> posted an article about the significant improvement in schools in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in recent years. I have written about this before when it was reported in Mississippi (article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=59243\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>), but at that time, only Mississippi had made the necessary changes to go from ranked 49th to 21st.<\/p>\n<p>The New York Times reports:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"css-1le37cb ez3869y0\">\n<li class=\"css-1i3ul0c eoqvrfo0\">\n<p class=\"css-11haxaj evys1bk0\"><strong>Louisiana ranks <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/educationrecoveryscorecard.org\/states\/louisiana\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">No. 1<\/a> in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/educationrecoveryscorecard.org\/states\/alabama\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">No. 1<\/a> in math recovery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"css-1i3ul0c eoqvrfo0\">\n<p class=\"css-11haxaj evys1bk0\"><strong>The state with the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.returntolearntracker.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lowest chronic absenteeism<\/a> in schools is Alabama, according to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.returntolearntracker.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a tracker<\/a> with data from 40 states.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"css-1i3ul0c eoqvrfo0\">\n<p class=\"css-11haxaj evys1bk0\"><strong>Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationsreportcard.gov\/profiles\/stateprofile?chort=1&amp;sub=RED&amp;sj=&amp;sfj=NP&amp;st=MN&amp;year=2024R3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ninth<\/a> in the country in fourth-grade reading levels \u2014 and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.urban.org\/research\/publication\/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">calculations<\/a> by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"css-1i3ul0c eoqvrfo0\">\n<p class=\"css-11haxaj evys1bk0\"><strong>Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationsreportcard.gov\/ndecore\/xplore\/NDE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">better readers<\/a> than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationsreportcard.gov\/profiles\/stateprofile\/overview\/MA?sfj=NP&amp;chort=1&amp;sub=MAT&amp;sj=MA&amp;st=MN&amp;year=2024R3&amp;cti=PgTab_Demographics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">twice as much<\/a> per pupil).<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Could it be that when we introduced politics into education, education suffered?<\/p>\n<p>The article concludes:<\/p>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>We liberals need to wake up to the reality that we are being outperformed on education, opportunity and racial equity \u2014 supposedly our issues. As recently as 2019, blue states had <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.educationnext.org\/red-states-have-seen-less-learning-loss-post-pandemic-scores-nations-report-card-naep\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">better average test scores<\/a> than red states, after adjusting for demographics; now, red states are mostly ahead. We used to say that education was the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and if so, we should be ashamed that by that metric, Mississippi Republicans are ahead of California Democrats. If we care about kids, we must be relentlessly empirical, and that must mean a willingness to learn from red states.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Kane said something you don\u2019t expect to hear from a Harvard professor: \u201cI hope that there are lots of governors that are looking at Mississippi and saying, \u2018Look, I want us to be next.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Please follow the link to read the entire article. It seems that the ideas that many of us grew up with still work!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday, The New York Times posted an article about the significant improvement in schools in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in recent years. I have written about this before when it was reported in Mississippi (article here), but at that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62785\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[967,763,903,7658,8558],"class_list":["post-62785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alabama","tag-education","tag-louisiana","tag-mississippi","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62787,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62785\/revisions\/62787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}