Phonics and not closing our schools for covid are the primary reasons for Mississippi’s recent real active gains. We are not necessarily doing better, but a lot of places are doing a lot worse. At this point all you need to do to stand out is not do dramatically worse.
Many years ago 60 Minutes featured AA Chicago teacher Marva Collins who used phonics to teach all her inner city kids to read. I tracked down and used the same Open Court Reading System to teach our girls after seeing that episode.
States that are bringing by phonics for reading education will soon outpace all other states in student performance.
My dad used to say, “Read, read, read! If you can read, you can learn to do anything!”. He quit school in 8th grade to work on the farm but his family always had books in the house. We grew up poor (although I didn’t realize it at the time), but there was always books in the house and we were expected to read (and work in the garden).