After Mississippi committed to a series of reforms and saw its third-grade literacy rates improve dramatically, a slate of other southern state implemented similar policies. Now, Oklahoma may attempt to follow in their footsteps — if policymakers can stomach a literacy-based retention requirement, one of the more controversial components of Mississippi’s plan.
As Oklahoma lingers near the bottom of U.S. reading rankings, state leaders and legislators are being asked to sound out a seemingly simple solution that carries political baggage: subscribe to a core policy of the “Mississippi miracle” and make students repeat third grade if they have not met literacy benchmarks after intensive intervention. More colloquially called “holding students back,” retention has been one of Mississippi’s key reforms. But ending “social promotion,” the practice of advancing students in grade levels for the sake of keeping them with their social cohort, could face opposition from parent groups and other education stakeholders.
“I think it needs to be a big part of the conversation going into the Legislature next year,” House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said Nov. 3. “Look, somebody with anecdotes is just someone with an opinion. If you look at data, the data shows that that worked in Mississippi, and so I think if we want to make data-driven decisions, that is something that we should consider doing.”
Hilbert (R-Bristow) pointed to positive results Oklahoma saw a decade ago when reading retention briefly became a statewide policy before political pushback reversed the mandate.
“It worked in Oklahoma. We had better outcomes when we had that,” Hilbert said. “We are doing a disservice to children if they are behind in the third grade, if we do not keep them in the third grade to make sure they have that chance. And I think that is going to be a big part of the conversation next session.”
Standing next to Hilbert at the time, Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton declined to take a position on retention as a statewide policy, but he signaled an openness to doing whatever it takes to improve literacy rates in Oklahoma.
“I am for ending us being 50th in the nation in education,” said Paxton (R-Tuttle). “So we are going to work hard to make sure that is accomplished.”
Although he has a limited tenure and has said he will not seek reelection, new State Superintendent of Public Instruction Lindel Fields hinted during an Oct. 30 interview that the devil is always in the details when it comes to education reforms.
“By and large, none of us want any kind of retention to be punitive. We want to set children up for success, and sometimes we have to take a step back to move forward,” Fields said. “Depending on, you know, how that language is read would determine if I am supportive of that or not. We want kids to be ready to move on, to set them up for success, and if [retention] is what that would do, that might be a good thing.”
Framing the need for literacy improvements in economic terms, State Chamber of Oklahoma President and CEO Chad Warmington confirmed the business advocacy group will be pushing literacy efforts as a policy initiative during the 2026 legislative session, a decision driven by the concerns of members.
“It is really the building block,” Warmington said. “The foundational part of your education journey is, ‘Are you literate coming through third grade?'”
During an Oct. 13 interim study on workforce needs in Oklahoma, Warmington said Mississippi and Oklahoma passed similar literacy-related policies more than a decade ago, but Oklahoma backtracked and derailed initial progress.
“(In) 2016, Oklahoma takes all of the teeth out of the reading sufficiency law. Mississippi stays the course. They had the same exact people saying the same exact thing about, ‘Thousands of fourth graders are going to be held back,’ and, ‘It is going to be devastating,’ and, ‘Parents are going to be foaming at the mouth,’ and, ‘There’s going to be mental health issues,'” Warmington said. “None of those things came true in 2016. And guess what happened? (…) Mississippi stayed the course. Oklahoma did not. Mississippi was 50th in third-grade reading in 2013. They are now seventh in the nation, and we are 47th in the nation.”
Despite concerns about Mississippi’s controversial reading mandate, a study published by Boston University’s Wheelock Educational Policy Center failed to find impacts on special education classification or absences caused by retention policies in the state. The education think tank ExcelinEd — founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2007 and also known as the Foundation for Excellence in Education — commissioned the study.
Prior retention policy ‘compromised before it was repealed’
While Oklahoma looks to replicate the successes of Mississippi — now the ninth-best state for fourth-grade reading, according to 2024 NAEP scores — some of the work may have already been done.
Casey Taylor, the senior policy director for literacy at ExcelinEd, testified during an Oct. 22 interim study about 18 “comprehensive early literacy fundamental principles” the organization uses to guide education policy analysis. Before she worked at ExcelinEd, Taylor served as assistant state literacy director for the Mississippi Department of Education and supported the implementation of Mississippi’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which was passed in 2013 and amended in 2016.
According to Taylor, 14 of the 18 fundamental principles are either fully implemented or progressing toward implementation in Oklahoma. ExcelinEd promotes the principles as those of a “comprehensive early literacy policy.” Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama have met or are working toward all 18 principles. Mississippi lacks one: the elimination of three-cueing, a context-based method of reading instruction that deprioritizes phonics. Oklahoma’s Strong Readers Act of 2024 prohibited three-cueing in Oklahoma.
Heading into 2026, three of the four ExcelinEd policy principles Oklahoma lacks fall under the group’s “retention and intervention” category.
“It really falls under that retention, intensive intervention, using (an) initial state assessment as your (retention) determinant and then having multiple pathways to promotion (to the next grade),” Taylor said. “And the other part of that is being sure you have good-cause exemptions for those students who need it.”
According to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in Mississippi, “a public school student may not be assigned a grade level based solely on the student’s age or any other factors that constitute social promotion.” Mississippi’s law offers good-cause exemptions that allow promotion from third to fourth grade, despite demonstrated literacy deficiencies, including:
- Students with limited English proficiency who have been in an English language learner program for less than two years;
- Students with disabilities whose individual education plans deem their participation in statewide assessments inappropriate;
- Students with disabilities who have individual education plans or Section 504 plans (which also offer accommodations to students) who have completed more than two years of intensive individual remediation or previous retention;
- Students who demonstrate an acceptable level of proficiency on an approved alternative standardized assessment; and
- Students who demonstrate a deficiency after two or more years of intensive intervention or two years of retention.
Taylor also encourages states to create “an educator preparation program assessment.” The Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability recently approved such an assessment, which will attempt to improve training for incoming educators.
According to ExcelinEd, a state achieves full implementation of preparation program assessments when “elementary education candidates must pass a science of reading aligned assessment to obtain teacher licensure.” While not a curriculum itself, the broad concepts under the “science of reading” umbrella use disciplines like neuroscience and psychology to create an understanding of how kids learn to read and how the brain allows it to happen. Typically, curricula using science-of-reading research emphasize more phonics instruction and sequential, explicit guidance on how to decode words and sentences.
Oklahoma has tangled with literacy-based retention before.
In 2011, the Legislature approved Senate Bill 346, which amended the Reading Sufficiency Act to prohibit social promotion and allow the retention of third graders with reading deficiencies, unless they qualified for exemptions. In 2014, the Legislature approved further amendments to the Reading Sufficiency Act through House Bill 2625, which added a “probationary promotion” option for the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years, enabling students who read below grade level to advance to the fourth grade if recommended by a “student reading proficiency team” comprised of the respective parents and educators.
Then-Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed HB 2625, but the Legislature overrode her veto. The Legislature extended the exemptions permanently in 2017, an action some thought would undermine the retention concept. When lawmakers gave final passage to Senate Bill 362 in 2024 — the Strong Readers Act that prohibited three-cueing — its overhaul of the Reading Sufficiency Act removed third grade literacy-based retention entirely.
“While [retention] was in place (in Oklahoma), it was compromised before it was repealed, because there was a parent override option. There were so many opportunities to bypass what was perhaps a needed retention for intervention that it weakened and diluted the effectiveness of it,” Taylor said. “In Mississippi, we use a state assessment with good-cause exemptions for qualifying students. There is no override. Parents are involved in the plan for their future, for their students.”
Follow @NonDocMedia on:
Facebook | X | Text or Email
‘There is a fair philosophical question to ask’
Heading into 2026, some Oklahoma legislators are already preparing to collect and unpack the political baggage that retention carries. While Hilbert and Paxton signaled that reinstating reading retention will be a “big part” of the session conversation, election-year dynamics could pose political problems in the populist state.
Some education-minded legislators are signaling an open-minded hesitancy, while others maintain a moral conviction for social promotion.
Sen. Mary Boren, a member of the Senate Education Committee, said she believes implementing retention for third grade assessments would be too late, owing to the relationships children have already formed by that age.
“I saw this with my own eyes as a school counselor. This one little boy was just the sweetest thing ever. He was a pretty tough little guy. He loved playing drums. His dad and mom were from El Salvador, you know, because of all the political violence. Anyway, he was held back, and this older kid in his class was a little bit of a punk (…) a little bit of a jerk,” said Boren (D-Norman). “His former class was passing him, as he was going with the third grade — his second third grade class — to the playground. And that little jerk kid, I saw him just kind of basically taunt him a little bit, like, ‘Haha, you are not with us anymore.’ And I saw little tears well up in that little third grader’s eyes.”
Boren said she is not against the idea of retention in its entirety, but she said kindergarten or first-grade retention would be more appropriate. While Boren’s anecdote exemplifies the worries that derailed retention in the past, Hilbert expressed concern about how poor literacy skills compound poor education outcomes overall.
“If a child is behind in the fourth grade, they are statistically more likely to be behind in the sixth grade, statistically more behind in high school,” Hilbert said. “And so, if you do not catch them up early on — while we all know people who are anomalies and they broke from the system — they are never going to catch up.”
To Hilbert’s point, a 2010 study by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago found that third grade reading is a “significant predictor of eighth-grade reading level and ninth-grade course performance.”
In a video message played at the start of the Oct. 22 interim study on “third-grade promotion literacy requirements,” Hilbert cautioned against believing any single policy can be a “silver bullet” to solve Oklahoma’s classroom outcomes, but he discussed the foundational role reading plays during education.
“Beyond third grade, onward, they are reading to learn. So if you never learned how to read properly, you cannot read to learn,” Hilbert said.
Rep. Chad Caldwell, who chairs the House Education Oversight Committee and is vice chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee, echoed Hilbert’s sentiment about silver bullets in an interview. Still, Caldwell said he supports reinstating literacy-based retention.
“We know it worked, and unfortunately, we went away from it, and our outcomes suffered because of it. (I am) definitely supportive of it. I am glad we are having kind of this larger conversation,” said Caldwell (R-Enid). “I think one of the things it does is it really helps shine a spotlight on, first and foremost, the issue of literacy and the importance of literacy. But it also shines a spotlight and helps identify those kids that need the most help and helps identify when interventions are needed and what interventions are needed.”
But with “parental rights” and “local control” always key considerations for education policies at the State Capitol, returning to literacy-based retention will take plenty of political will during an election year. Senate Education Committee Chairman Adam Pugh, for instance, is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for state superintendent of public instruction. Historically, some leaders of the Senate and House have considered it inappropriate for legislators seeking statewide office to hold leadership positions or chair committees out of fear that it further politicizes policy discussions. Paxton, however, has retained Pugh (R-Edmond) as his education chairman thus far, much like Hilbert has retained a Corporation Commission candidate — Rep. Brad Boles (R-Marlow) — as chairman of the House Energy and Natural Resources Oversight Committee.
“If you are an engaged parent and you sit down with your child’s third grade teacher, and your teacher is like, ‘Your son or daughter cannot read, I do not think they should be progressing to fourth grade.’ Like, there is a responsible decision that needs to be made from the parents’ perspective,” Pugh said. “I think there is a fair philosophical question to ask: Is it the state’s right to tell the family your kid cannot move to fourth grade?”
Pugh acknowledged growing calls for Oklahoma to revisit the mechanism legislators repealed in the 2024 Strong Readers Act, which he authored. Pugh confirmed that the remnants of Oklahoma’s retention law were removed in the bill to ease its passage, but he anticipates a more robust discussion on the topic in 2026.
“I think there is going to be a conversation this year on what does retention need to look like,” Pugh said. “To get the Strong Readers (Act), what was previously known as reading sufficiency — to get it to a good spot — we had to kind of leave that issue aside, because there is a deep philosophical conversation about it.”
More than a decade ago when the Legislature implemented a retention policy, Democrats largely opposed it. While Republicans have only gained seats since then, it’s possible that Democrats locking up and joining Republicans who value parental rights could derail any proposed reading mandates.
Rep. Jacob Rosecrants (D-Norman) voiced steadfast opposition to holding students back in school.
“I am not for retention. We had a third-grade flunk law, and it was awful,” said Rosecrants, a former teacher. “The reason why we do not want to have a third-grade flunk law is because it creates a massive, massive bottleneck, and everything else is just so laser-focused on reading and literacy and everything else, and everything else kind of goes off to the wayside.”
Rep. Michelle McCane (D-Tulsa), who sits on the House Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee, expressed an openness toward retention if the decision is data-driven.
“I know a lot of elementary teacher friends have varying ideas on whether kids should be held back or not. I think there have been numerous studies on the effectiveness of that, and I think that is something we should certainly look at. But I think maybe a better question is, ‘Why isn’t education better adapting to the society we have now?'” McCane said. “We can do retention, but I think we have to slow down. Instead of trying to find quick fixes, really look at the data and what needs to be addressed.”
In Mississippi, retained third grade students are given intensive reading instruction throughout their repeat year, including at least 90 minutes of reading instruction each day, parental notifications, an action plan and a “Read at Home” plan, according to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
