[dataengineer56]

They hold students back if they don't pass a basic reading literacy test in third grade.

[pc86]

Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial?

[reverendsteveii]

They should do that with sports too, since it's fair and provides a reasonable basis for comparison

[aredox]

Who would have thought that statistics could be improved by eliminating bad data points?

[motorest]

> Who would have thought that not pushing kids forward into an academic environment they're not prepared for would be beneficial?

I think the point is that the school system is outputting kids that are not prepared for the academic environment they create themselves for these kids. So instead of fixing the problem, they are eliminating the bad results to inflate the success statistics.

[c4mden]

They invested heavily in early literacy programs and literacy training for K-3 teachers.

[MattSteelblade]

The author posted a link to an article[1] showing that Mississippi's retention policies were not responsible for the increase in scores.

> But I've gotten some plausible pushback from researchers who say that Mississippi has always held back lots of kids. In practice, the 2013 law didn't change anything.

> ...

> In 2017, the average age of a fourth grade class is a minuscule 0.01 higher than the 1998-2013 average. That's no difference at all. This proxy is strong evidence that Mississippi's retention policies never changed in practice, which means it's entirely kosher to just compare their scores normally before and after reform.

[1] https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...

[duxup]

Is that a state wide policy?