Blue States With Strong Teachers' Unions Are Terrible At Literacy Reforms
A 2026 analysis from the Progressive Policy Institute found a strong negative correlation between the political power of state teachers' unions and states' adoption of evidence-based early literacy policies. PPI Director of Education Policy Rachel Canter conducted the analysis, comparing union-strength rankings from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute against literacy-policy data from the ExcelinEd education advocacy group. At least eight of the ten states with the worst student literacy scores lean Democratic and have politically powerful teachers' unions. Only five of the worst ten are Republican, and one is a swing state.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Canter explained that PPI sorts states by which party holds the legislature and the governor's mansion, and that the gap tracks union power more closely than it tracks party.
The stronger the teachers unions, the fewer early literacy reforms states have adopted.
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) September 14, 2026
Blue states average just 9 of 18 key literacy policies, compared with 13.5 in red and purple states.
Children’s ability to read should come BEFORE union power. pic.twitter.com/mSLhEahRrY
Fordham's June ranking put California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey among the strongest union states in the country, while Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arkansas ended up near the bottom. When you cross-reference this list with ExcelinEd's literacy tracker, the negative correlation becomes clear.
Partisanship alone cannot account for this situation; Wyoming and South Dakota, led by the Republican Party and with weak unions, still score poorly on literacy policy. Of the about half of states controlled by Republicans, only Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee developed comprehensive literacy policies and stayed committed long enough to see results.
Canter spent years in Mississippi, a state that ranked among the nation's worst performers for middle and elementary test scores in 2013 and by 2024 had climbed to a tie for seventh in fourth-grade reading and 13th in math. "We found a strong, negative correlation between the two - the more powerful the unions, the fewer literacy policy principles the state had adopted," Canter said.
Mississippi turned things around by enacting the Literacy Based Promotion Act in 2013. This piece of legislation required third graders scoring at the lowest reading level to repeat the grade. The law mandated extra training and coaching for teachers at the state's lowest-performing elementary schools, required every school to screen kindergartners through third graders for reading difficulty three times a year, and required immediate parent notification when a child fell below benchmark.
The approach is based on the science of reading. This instructional framework centers on phonics, systematic letter-sound instruction, background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension, and traces back to the National Reading Panel's 2000 report.
Mississippi fourth-graders posted the country's largest gains since 2013, tying for seventh in reading and landing 13th in math among all states by 2024. That happened even as national literacy trends moved in the opposite direction. Fourth-grade reading scores fell back to roughly their 2000 level. Math scores recovered only partially from a 2022 low and remain below the highs the country set more than a decade earlier. Middle and high school reading and math results in 2024 either matched or fell below their lowest marks of the century, and the most recent PISA results showed American 15-year-olds still well under pre-pandemic highs, tied at their record low.
Despite the negative correlation between powerful teachers' unions and literacy, there is hope to turn things around nationwide. In New Mexico, for example, lawmakers passed literacy legislation unanimously over the objections of teachers' unions, moving state policy closer to Mississippi's model. The reforms addressed teacher licensure, instructional coaching, and curriculum. New Mexico's unions eventually withdrew their opposition.
Maryland followed suit in 2024, adopting a policy mirroring Mississippi's. The state board did, however, carve out a compromise after pushback from its teachers' association, allowing parents to opt a child out of repeating third grade if the child completes a state-approved reading-intervention program, an alternative that takes effect next year with results still unknown.
Even the deep blue state of Massachusetts, which has the nation's third-strongest teachers' union, is following Mississippi's footsteps. In June, Gov. Maura Healey signed legislation strengthening teacher training, K-3 curriculum requirements, screening, and parent notification, handing the state education department real enforcement authority. The bill passed both chambers unanimously, despite opposition and pressure from teachers' unions.
Mary Tamer of Mass Potential, who led the Mass Reads Coalition, credited a coalition of parents and researchers, weak post-pandemic reading scores, and mounting skepticism of union arguments for unrestricted classroom autonomy. Three former Massachusetts Teachers of the Year backed the bill over their own union's objections. "They were incredibly brave to speak up against union leadership on this issue," Tamer said.
Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Mexico prove that Mississippi's turnaround travels wherever the political will exists to put students first. "The question is whether policymakers, regardless of party alignment, have the courage to risk taking heat on behalf of our children's future," Canter wrote.