By 2012, both Oklahoma and Mississippi enacted reading laws that contained similar provisions, including early intervention for struggling readers and retention as a last resort if a child finishes third grade reading far below grade level.

But Oklahoma lawmakers largely gutted their third-grade reading law in 2014 while Mississippi policymakers stuck to their guns.

The two states, which were both experiencing significant improvement in literacy rates, have been on separate tracks ever since.

Oklahoma’s reading outcomes are now among the nation’s worst, while Mississippi’s results rank in the top 10 states. Experts say that’s not a coincidence.

“The difference is Mississippi persisted with the tough-love reforms,” said Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd, a national group that focuses on student learning. “Oklahoma did not.”

The results of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests, which are administered in all 50 states, show that Oklahoma’s performance has nosedived since lawmakers voted to effectively allow social promotion of third-grade students, regardless of reading ability, during the 2014 legislative session.

In 2013, only one state had a lower score on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) fourth-grade reading test than Mississippi. (Oklahoma’s score indicated its students were nearly a full year ahead of Mississippi students at that time.)

Today, the situation is almost flipped. Only six states score higher than Mississippi on NAEP’s fourth-grade reading test. Mississippi’s scale score equates to roughly a half-grade higher than the national average and is now more than a year ahead of Oklahoma counterparts.

Both Oklahoma and Mississippi were on a track of rapid improvement after passing third-grade reading laws that included a requirement for students to repeat the third grade if a child is at least one year below grade level (if not more).

In fact, in 2015 Oklahoma received national recognition for dramatic improvement on NAEP and had a fourth-grade reading score above the national average for the first time in years. But that proved to be the state’s high-water mark, because during the 2014 legislative session, Oklahoma lawmakers voted to effectively gut the state’s successful third-grade reading law.

Rather than stick to the successful reform, Oklahoma lawmakers opted in 2014 to again allow social promotion of children based on age rather than academic achievement.

When House Bill 2625, by state Rep. Katie Henke, was debated on the House floor on May 12, 2014, critics warned the change would harm students.

“What scares me is you’re going to have kids that are already behind, and we’re going to move them forward into an environment that’s going to be even tougher than what they were just in,” said then-state Rep. Jason Nelson, R-Oklahoma City. “It doesn’t get easier in fourth grade. It’s harder in fourth grade.”

Henke, R-Tulsa, dismissed concerns about social promotion, arguing officials should trust local school officials to determine a child’s reading ability rather than “a state agency.”

“Our schools are working diligently to make sure that our students get the help that they need,” Henke said.

Supporters of watering down the retention law openly acknowledged that thousands of Oklahoma students would be promoted without achieving grade-level mastery of reading.

During debate, one supporter of HB 2625 noted that 7,970 third grade students in Oklahoma public schools were reading far below grade level at that time, and nearly all would have to repeat the third grade unless Henke’s bill became law.

Nelson countered that no one believed most of those children were prepared for fourth grade.

“I haven’t heard anybody say they think all of these children, these thousands of children, can read on grade level,” Nelson said.

Henke predicted students would eventually drop out of school if they were not socially promoted.

“I think a lot of them will view themselves as failures,” Henke said.

But Nelson noted that kids who read far below grade level typically continue to struggle when socially promoted into higher grades, and predicted Oklahoma’s dropout rate could increase because of the change in the law.

“This is not about education. If it’s about education, you’re going to make sure the kid can read,” Nelson said. “This is about social promotion for social reasons. Not because the child can read. They cannot read adequately.”

NAEP scores in the subsequent years show Nelson understood reality better than the bill’s supporters. With social promotion allowed again, Oklahoma students’ performance on reading has plummeted steadily.

And that decline has occurred even as public-school revenue has surged.

Edunomics Lab researchers found Oklahoma’s per-pupil spending increased 47 percent from 2013 to 2024, far outpacing inflation, but NAEP scores in both reading and math are far lower today than in 2013.

In contrast, Mississippi officials not only stayed the course, but also strengthened their reading law. Now Mississippi’s reading gains are receiving national attention.

Chad Aldeman, the founder of ReadNotGuess.com, a program to help parents teach their kids to read, wrote, “The ‘Mississippi Miracle’ is alive and well. Over the last 10 years, Mississippi is the only state to make gains across all performance levels in 4th grade reading. While the bottom was falling out in most states, with the scores of low-performing students falling 10 or 20 or even 30 points, the scores of the lowest-performing students in Mississippi rose 9 points” [emphasis in original].

“Mississippi’s literacy success is rightfully being recognized as a model for the rest of the country, with other states looking to Mississippi as they consider changing their own approaches to elementary school literacy,” noted Grace Breazeale, a K-12 policy associate at Mississippi First.

Breazeale noted that Mississippi fourth graders “experienced the highest growth in the nation in reading and math between 2013 and 2024.”

The gains in Mississippi are not skewed by improvements solely among top students. Data shows that the worst-performing students in Mississippi—those in the bottom 10 percent academically—are doing better than the bottom 10 percent of Mississippi students in 2013.

Mississippi is the only state to see the bottom 10 percent of fourth-grade students improve during that time. In contrast, reading results for the bottom 10 percent of Oklahoma students today are nearly two grades lower than in 2013.

Officials in Oklahoma are now trying to find ways to claw out of the academic basement. Last year, lawmakers voted to ban the use of long-discredited “three-cueing” instruction that directs children to guess words based on associated pictures, rather than sound them out. The new law also emphasized phonics instruction and the use of the science of reading.

Levesque said that’s a good start, but Oklahoma officials cannot afford to again wilt in the face of opposition, as they did in 2014, if they hope to make up lost ground.

“Governor Stitt and Oklahoma lawmakers adopted good fundamental reading policies in the last legislative session,” Levesque said. “It will be critical for the state to stick with these reforms and implement them well.”