Reporters repeated the "miracle" nonsense without doing their fucking job correctly and always being skeptical..
Statistics show that Mississippi's children have gone from having almost the worst scores on the standardized national reading test for fourth-graders in 2013 to narrowly exceeding the national average in the most recent test.
[...]
What's the real story? Drum and Somerby focused on the so-called "third-grade gate" implemented by the literacy program — the requirement that third-grade underachievers repeat third grade. In Mississippi, almost 10% of third-graders have been getting held back, a higher proportion than in any other state. (Some may have been held back more than once.)
The statistical result of this policy should be obvious. If you throw the lowest-ranking 10% out of a statistical pool, the remaining pool inevitably looks better. Drum went so far as to add those dropped pupils back into the calculation. He found that the gains from 2013 to 2022 completely disappeared. "In other words," he remarked, "the 2013 reforms had all but no effect."
The monomaniacal focus on standardized testing above all else was one of the key components of the early 21st century campaign to destroy America's education system. The neoliberal technocrats used it as an excuse to steal funding. From schools that were already suffering. The absurd amount of time spent teaching to the test required to get decent scores left little time for real education. The move was supported by, well, the standardized testing companies that invented the idea, the neoliberals who wanted to loot schools, and the technocrats who wanted education to be carved down to a tech worker production line.