Mississippi’s Plan for Maintaining Momentum: Conversation with Carey Wright

In this special GLR Week 2020 webinar, we were honored to have the 65th Governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, offer opening remarks and introduce our keynote speaker, Dr. Carey Wright. In these opening remarks, Gov. Reeves highlighted Mississippi’s impressive achievements, including placing number one in the nation in NAEP gains in fourth-grade reading and fourth-grade math. In his introduction of Dr. Wright, Gov. Reeves emphasized that the success of Mississippi could not have happened without Dr. Wright and her leadership team.

Serving as the moderator, Dr. Angela Rutherford engaged Dr. Wright in sharing Mississippi’s journey, which in six short years went from 39th to 2nd in the nation in fourth-grade reading based on NAEP, the nation’s report card. With a legislative mandate (the state’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act), a clear vision and mission to create a world-class education system, and six goals that drive every decision, Dr. Wright and her leadership team began moving the state department of education in a new direction. Her change agenda involved: creating a culture of high expectations; implementing more rigorous standards — including new assessments aligned to those standards and to the rigor of NAEP — and strong accountability; and building the capacity of the adults. Dr. Wright also hired a top-notch leadership team and placed a big bet on early learning. Now, Dr. Wright is focused on maintaining momentum in the face of the global pandemic. Concentrating on the impact of school closures, she is committed to a reopening plan that will address digital and other inequities and that emphasizes acceleration, not remediation — all in an effort to mitigate learning loss, particularly for kids in poverty and kids of color. In sharing her commitment to supporting parents, Dr. Wright closed her remarks by affirming that parents are essential partners, underscoring that Mississippi has more work ahead to ensure we understand parents’ needs and embrace their critical role.

In their roles as commentators, Dr. Rutherford engaged three key partners and leaders to share insights and viewpoints on Mississippi’s journey:

·        Former Senator Gray Tollison, author of the state’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), shared that the most critical aspect of the legislation was effective implementation and the focus and investments on early learning. A key lesson learned — and what he would do differently — is to include in the legislation a focus on colleges and universities; ensuring that university faculty who prepare future teachers understand the science of reading, and that their teacher prep programs have a deep focus on this science.

·        Kelly Butler, CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute, highlighted the role of philanthropy. Philanthropist Jim Barksdale and his late wife Sally’s $100 million gift helped to create the Institute, which played a significant role in partnering with the state in advancing the LBPA. Now, philanthropy is playing a role in helping to create a multistate initiative to replicate the success in Mississippi.

·        Dr. Kymyona Burk, Policy Director-Early Literacy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, shared her work with 16 states. In addressing what these states have learned from Mississippi, Dr. Burk noted that although many are focused on doing much of the same work, most want to learn about the “how” — how did Mississippi pull it off. A key success factor was that the legislation provided funding to implement the LBPA and Dr. Wright and her team were able to prioritize limited funding. And in sharing what Mississippi can learn from the 16 states, Dr. Burk described how, early on, Tennessee focused on the issue of teacher prep programs, including faculty professional development, AND on putting a premium on quality instructional materials.