It may not be enough to beat back the Democratic Party’s socialist savior, Zohran Mamdani, this November, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams has overseen a successful reform of New York City public schools that has delivered significant gains in reading scores, especially for black and Hispanic students. All Adams had to do was copy Mississippi to do it.
In addition to a 5% across-the-board cut in spending in 2023, Adams introduced phonics-based reading, a system that teaches children to read by connecting letters with their corresponding sounds and then blending those sounds to form words. If this sounds to you no more than common sense, you were probably born before the 1980s when whole language learning became vogue and was taught to teachers on college campuses nationwide.
The whole language approach abandoned the methodical memorization and testing of phonics-based reading for a holistic approach in which teachers immersed children in language-rich environments and expected them to develop reading skills naturally. It became popular with teachers unions pushing to abandon phonics instruction across the country. This was, one suspects, because it was less rigorous, not merely for children but also themselves.
It didn’t work.
Frustrated by decades of bad test scores, including the most recent ones that showed 4 out of every 5 fourth graders were not proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Mississippi passed a Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2011, implementing research-backed methods of teaching, including the use of phonics. Each child was tested early, and literacy specialists were dispatched to struggling schools.
The switch to phonics worked. From 2013 to 2022, Mississippi improved its fourth-grade reading rank from 49th to 21st nationally. The biggest gains were among black students. Alabama and Louisiana soon followed Mississippi’s example, replicating the Mississippi Miracle in their own states.
Adams introduced phonics instruction to New York City as recently as 2023, but early results are promising. Just a year ago, most New York City students in grades three through eight were reading poorly, below grade level, with only 49% testing proficient. Now, the numbers have reversed: 57% are reading at or above proficiency. The gains were largest among black and Hispanic students.
Even California is taking baby steps toward abandoning whole language teaching and returning to phonics. This June, the state Assembly passed AB 1454, which would encourage districts to provide professional development and choose instructional materials from a forthcoming state-approved list, while also requiring that administrator preparation programs include training on how to support evidence-based literacy instruction. Unfortunately, California’s powerful teachers unions have already made sure the bill cannot force school districts to adopt phonics. “There’s so much latitude as to what districts can do that I don’t see what’s going on now changing in any substantial way,” Stanford University professor emeritus Claude Goldenberg said of the bill.
Despite the bill’s watered-down language, it has stalled in the state Senate, where teachers’ unions are again trying to strangle it in the crib.
If California voters ever grow tired of the fact that Mississippi students now regularly outperform California students on national reading proficiency tests, they may want to think about voting Democrats and their union overlords out of office.