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The so-called “Mississippi Miracle,” indicated that the reading skills of elementary students in that state made extraordinary reading gains, has received a lot of attention.

Now, however, an ambitious reexamination of the data suggests that the gains may have been a statistical illusion – that the increased fourth-grade reading scores were inflated by a new law requiring that “poor performing” third-graders be retained.

You can read all about it at How much of “Mississippi’s education miracle” is an artifact of selection bias? (be sure to also review the many comments left on that post – another researcher in one of them suggested that that state’s vastly increased identification of learning disabled students who didn’t have to take the test was another cause of the increased scores).

As that post also points out, there have been many “miracles” touted in education (see The Best Posts About Attrition Rates At So-Called “Miracle” Schools).

Perhaps we should stop hoping for miracles and be satisfied with small, incremental progress, which is what most teachers know?

What works in education, when it works, and under what circumstances is a complicated issue.  Perhaps we should all acknowledge that complicated issues don’t easily lend themselves to simple answers, as Michael Pershan pointed out in I Don’t Know What to Think About America’s Declining Test Scores and Neither Should You.