The weather is a little warmer; the days are a little longer.

And the fish is about to fry!

Lent begins Wednesday, Feb. 18, followed by what should be considered a holiday of its own — First Fish-Fry Friday!

So many places offer fried fish on Fridays that it would be impossible to list them all, but we do our best. Most run specials every Friday until Easter, which is April 5 this year, but some only offer fish on certain dates, so be sure to read carefully.

That being said, here’s our annual list of restaurants and organizations who abide by the Midwestern Friday ritual. Don’t see your fish fry on the list? Email the info — restaurant or organization, location, date(s), what’s served with the fish, cost and how folks can contact you — to eat@pioneerpress.com and we’ll add you.

Our restaurants need your help more than ever this year, so maybe consider hitting a few fish fries this Lent!

ORGANIZATIONS

328 Grill at American Legion Post 98

When: 3:45-7 p.m. or until gone Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Location: 328 Broadway Ave., St. Paul Park

Food: Beer-battered or baked cod; mac and cheese, au gratin potatoes, coleslaw and pudding

Cost: All-you-can-eat buffet, $20; children ages 5-10, $10

More information: 328grill.com

Church of St. John Vianney

When: 4-6:30 p.m. Fridays during Lent (through March 27)

Address: 840 N. 19th Ave., South St. Paul

Food: Gluten-free fried fish, fries or baked potatoes, grilled cheese, mac and cheese, coleslaw, vegetable and desserts

Cost: Adults, $15; children 6-12, $10; under six, free. Cash, check or credit card accepted.

Church of St. Patrick’s

When: 4:30-7 p.m. Friday, March 7

Location: At the Arcade-Phalen American Legion, 1129 Arcade St., St. Paul

Food: Baked or fried cod, tater tots, coleslaw, mac and cheese and bread

Cost: One piece of fish, $12; two pieces, $16. Veggie egg rolls sold separately for $1.50 each. Bake sale and takeout available.

Guardian Angels Catholic Community

When: 4-7 p.m. Feb. 27, March 13 and March 27

Location: 8260 N. Fourth St., Oakdale

Food: Baked or fried haddock, coleslaw, red potatoes, mac and cheese, green beans, roll and dessert

Cost: All-you-can-eat dine-in 11+, $18; seniors 65+, $10; kids 5 and under eat free

More information: Order online at guardian-angels.org/fish-fry

Holy Family Catholic High School

When: 4:30-7:30 p.m., Friday, March 6

Location: 8101 Kochia Lane, Victoria

Cost: $16 for adult fish fry meal ($10 for senior citizens); $10 for a grilled cheese meal. Bingo with cash prizes from 6-8 p.m.

Tickets: May be purchased in advance at hfchs.org/tickets or at the door

Holy Family Maronite Catholic Church

When: 4-7 p.m. Feb. 20 and 27 and March 6, 13, 20 and 27

Location: 1960 Lexington Avenue, Mendota Heights

Food: Baked fish, green beans in tomato sauce served over a bed of Lebanese rice, fried cabbage, flat bread, garlic sauce, homemade dessert

Cost: $15

More information: 651-291-1116; holyfamilymaronitechurch.org

Knights of Columbus Council 4967

When: 4 – 7 p.m. Feb. 20 and 27 and March 6, 13 and 20

Location: St. Peter Catholic School cafeteria, 2600 N. Margaret St., North St. Paul

Food: Deep-fried or baked cod, au gratin potatoes, mac and cheese, green beans, coleslaw, breadsticks. Gluten-free options available.

Cost: Adults $15; seniors $14; children 7–12, $5; 6 years and under free.

Lino Lakes American Legion Post 566

When: 4:30-8 p.m. Fridays during Lent

Location: 7731 Lake Drive, Lino Lakes

Food: Three pieces of hand-breaded cod, coleslaw, choice of baked potato or fries, dinner roll

Cost: $15; all-you-can-eat, $19

More information: 651-783-0055; linolakeslegion.com

North St. Paul VFW Post 1350

When: 4-7 p.m. or until gone, Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Location: 2483 E. 7th Ave., North St. Paul

Food: Three pieces hand-battered pollock, baked beans, fries, coleslaw and French bread

Cost: $17; one piece, $12

More information: 651-777-2855

Northwest Sportshow

When: 3-7 p.m. March 6

Location: Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 2nd Ave. S., Minneapolis

Food: Four pieces of beer-battered walleye and choice of side (fries, kettle chips or applesauce)

Cost: $18.75 with fries; $16.75 with chips or applesauce; plus $15 adult admission ($5 after 5 p.m. and $13 in advance at northwestsportshow.com)

Rogers Lions Club

When: March 20 and 27

Location: 21st Century Bank Event Center, 12716 Main St., Rogers

Food: Fried cod, shrimp, fries, mac and cheese, coleslaw and bun. Water, juice and coffee are free. Cash bar available.

Cost: Adults, $15; children, $10

Roseville VFW Post 7555

When: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Fridays during Lent

Location: 1145 Woodhill Drive, Roseville

Food: Michelob Golden Light beer-battered cod or walleye, fries, coleslaw

Cost: Fish fry, $16.65 extra piece of fish, $4; Walleye, $21.85

More information: 651-483-5313

St. John’s Men’s Club

When: 4:30-7:30 p.m. Fridays during Lent (through March 27)

Location: 14383 Forest Blvd. N., Hugo

Food: Deep-fried Icelandic cod, baby red potatoes, fries, coleslaw, mac and cheese, pickles, rolls and cookies.

Cost: Adults, $15; seniors, $12; children 6-12, $10; 5 and under, free.

More information: 651-429-7937 or stgens.org

St. Joseph of the Lakes

When: 5-7 p.m. Feb. 27 and March 6, 13 and 20

Location: 171 Elm St., Lino Lakes

Food: Pan-fried or baked cod, tomato-basil soup, roasted potatoes, green beans, creamy coleslaw, bread and a variety of homemade desserts

Cost: Adults, $15; children 5-10, $7; children under 5, free. $45 per family, dine-in or takeout

Church of St. Matthew

When: 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Location: Social Hall entrance is at the back of 510 Hall Ave., St. Paul. Curbside to-go entrance is off Humboldt Avenue onto Robie Street

Food: Fried or baked wild-caught Alaskan pollock, baked potato, vegetable, coleslaw, roll and dessert. Non-fish options are spaghetti or grilled cheese.

Cost: Fish dinner, adults, $16; children 5-12, $8. Spaghetti or grilled cheese, adults, $14; children 5-12, $7; children under 5, free. Beer and wine available for dine-in purchase.

More information: st-matts.org

St. Pascal’s Men’s Club

When: 4:30-7 p.m. Fridays during Lent (through March 27)

Location: 1757 Conway St., St. Paul, Brioschi Hall (Flandreau Street entrance)

Food: Fried and baked cod, coleslaw, au gratin and seasoned fried potatoes, coleslaw, mixed steamed vegetables, mac and cheese and dinner roll and pudding

Cost: All-you-can-eat dinner, adults, $16; children 6-11, $8; children 5 and younger, free. Cash, check or card accepted.

South St. Paul Moose Lodge

When: Wednesday, Feb. 18 and Fridays during Lent

Location: 5927 Concord Blvd., Inver Grove Heights

Food: Three pieces of beer-battered cod, fries and coleslaw

Cost: $17

More information: 651-455-2142

RESTAURANTS

5-8 Grill & Tap

When: Fridays during Lent

Location: 1741 S. Robert St., West St. Paul

Food: Hand-battered cod made with Summit EPA, fries, coleslaw

Cost: All-you-can-eat dinner, $17.99; lunch portion, $14.99

More information: 651-456-5858; 5-8club.com

5-8 Tavern & Grill

When: Fridays during Lent

Location: 2289 Minnehaha Ave. E., Maplewood

Food: Hand-battered cod made with Summit EPA, fries, coleslaw

Cost: All-you-can-eat dinner, $17.99; lunch portion, $14.99

More information: 651-735-5858; 5-8club.com

Bennett’s Chop and Railhouse

When: Fridays during Lent

Location: 1305 W. 7th St., St. Paul or 517 2nd St., Hudson, Wis.

Food: Finnegans beer-battered cod, shoestring fries, coleslaw

Cost: Lunch, two refills, $14.95; all-you-can-eat dinner, $18.95

More information: 651-228-1408 or 715-501-2467 (Hudson); bennettschopandrailhouse.com

Birch’s on the Lake

When: Fridays during Lent

Location: 1310 Wayzata Blvd., Long Lake

Food: Beer-battered cod, hand-cut fries and house tartar; herb-crusted walleye with Yukon Gold whipped potatoes and asparagus; or wild-rice- and crab-stuffed walleye, baby carrots, asparagus, cippolini onions and lemon cream

Cost: Cod, $36; walleye, $40; stuffed walleye, $48

More information: 952-473-7373; birchsonthelake.com

Burger Dive

When: Every day, Feb. 18-April 3

Location: 731 Randolph Ave., St. Paul or Rosedale Center

Food: House-battered cod, sliced potatoes, rye toast, remoulade and coleslaw

Cost: $22

More Information: 651-294-3240; burgerdivemn.com

Kendall’s Tavern & Chophouse

When: Lunch and dinner, Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Location: 12800 Bunker Prairie Road N.W., Coon Rapids

Food: 12-ounce filet of hand-battered haddock, choice of fries or tater tots and coleslaw

Cost: $24

More information: 736-951-7225; kendallstc.com

Mason Jar Kitchen & Bar

The Lenten fish fry at Mason Jar in Eagan. (Courtesy of Mason Jar)

Location: 1565 Cliff Road, Eagan

Dates: Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Food: 3 pieces hand-dipped, Bent Paddle Light Lager-battered cod, house-made coleslaw and Parmesan-parsley fries.

Cost: $19

More information: 651-340-7809; masonjar.kitchen

My Burger

The $8.95 fish sandwich special at MyBurger is available during Lent. (Courtesy of MyBurger)

When: Wednesday, Feb. 18 and all Fridays during Lent

Location: 11 metro locations, including 1580 Grand Ave., St. Paul

Food: Breaded Atlantic cod sandwich and fries

Cost: $8.95

More information: myburgerusa.com

Red Cow

Location: Five metro locations, including 393 Selby Ave., St. Paul

Food: Three pieces of Alaskan cod, coleslaw and fries

Cost: $19.50

More information: 651-789-0545; redcowmn.com

The St. Paul Grill

When: Fridays through April 3

Location: 350 Market St., St. Paul

Food: Shore lunch features three jumbo fried shrimp, a crab cake, coleslaw and hand-cut fries with cocktail sauce and tarragon aioli.

Cost: $29.95

More information: 651-224-7455; stpaulgrill.com

Sgt. Peppers Grille and Bar

When: Fridays year-round

Location: 930 N. Helena Ave., Oakdale

Food: Hamm’s beer-battered cod, baked potato and coleslaw

Cost: All-you-can-eat lunch or dinner, $18

More information: 651-738-7052; sgtpeppersgrille.com

Smack Shack

When: Fridays during Lent

Locations: 603 N. Washington Ave., Minneapolis and 3801 Minnesota Drive, Bloomington

Food: Traditional fish and chips with beer-battered cod, Cajun fries and coastal slaw

Cost: Fish and chips, $22.95

More information: smack-shack.com

Stockyards Tavern & Chophouse

When: Fridays during Lent (through April 3)

Location: 456 Concord Exchange S., South St. Paul

Food: 10 ounces of hand-battered haddock, fries, coleslaw and house-made tartar

Cost: $25

More information: 651-350-7743; stockyardstc.com

Tiffany’s Sports Lounge

The Lenten fish fry at Tiffany’s in St. Paul. (Courtesy of Tiffany’s)

When: Fridays during Lent

Location: 2051 Ford Parkway, St. Paul

Food: Summit beer-battered, cold water Alaskan pollock, fries and coleslaw

Cost: Adults, $19.71; kids, $10

More information: 651-690-4747; tiffanysportslounge.com

Tria Restaurant

When: Fridays during Lent (through April )

Location: 5959 Centerville Road, North Oaks

Food: Prix fixe dinner menu, options for each course

Cost: Starts at $35

More information: 651-426-9222; triarestaurant.com/event-calendar/lent-fish-features/2026-02-20

Urban Growler

The walleye fish fry at Urban Growler Brewing in St. Paul. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

When: Fridays year-round

Location: 2325 Endicott St., St. Paul

Food: Panko-crusted walleye, house tartar, coleslaw, pumpernickel rye bread and choice of side

Cost: $25

More information: 651-340-5793; urbangrowlerbrewing.com

Welsch’s Big Ten Tavern

When: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays

Location: 4703 U.S. 10, Arden Hills

Food: Fried pollock, fries and coleslaw

Cost: All-you-can-eat lunch (until 3 p.m.), $14.95; or dinner, $16.95

More information: 651-633-7253; WelschsBigTen.com

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By JIM MORRIS and ROB GILLIES

VANCOUVER, Canada (AP) — A shooting at a school in British Columbia left eight dead including the suspect, with two more people found dead at a home believed to be connected to the incident, Canadian authorities said Tuesday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said more than 25 people are injured, including two with life-threatening injuries, after the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

School shootings are rare in Canada.

The town of Tumbler Ridge, which has a population of about 2,400 people, is more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) north of Vancouver, near the border with Alberta. The provincial government website lists Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as having 175 students from Grades 7 to 12.

RCMP Superintendent Ken Floyd told reporters that investigators had identified the shooter but would not release a name, but that the suspect’s motive remained unclear.

“We are not in a place to understand why or what may have motivated this tragedy,” Floyd said.

He added that police are still investigating how the victims are connected to the shooter.

“As part of the initial response to the active shooting, police entered the school to locate the threat. During the search, officers located multiple victims. An individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self‑inflicted injury,” RCMP said in a statement.

“Six additional individuals, not including the suspect, have been located deceased inside the school. Two victims have been airlifted to hospital with serious or life‑threatening injuries. A third victim died while being transported to hospital.”

The Peace River South School District said earlier Tuesday that there was a “lockdown and secure and hold” at both the secondary school and the Tumbler Ridge Elementary school.

Larry Neufeld, the member of the legislature for Peace River South, told reporters at the legislature that an “excess” of resources, including RCMP and ambulance support, have been sent to the community.

He said he didn’t want to release any more information over concerns that it might jeopardize the safety of the ongoing operation.

“Our hearts are in Tumbler Ridge tonight with the families of those who have lost loved ones. Government will ensure every possible support for community members in the coming days, as we all try to come to terms with this unimaginable tragedy,” British Columbia Premier David Eby said in a statement.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto.

The next election is not an existential event for the United States. Neither is the one after that — or the one after that. But that won’t stop American politicians from claiming otherwise, nor anxiety-ridden voters from believing them.

For at least the last decade, our politics has been gripped by a malady I call “The-End-Is-Near-ism.” It’s fueled by Democrats and Republicans (incumbents, candidates, activists) declaring the next election the most important of our lifetime. That’s how the fever starts, anyway. Then, as the body politic’s temperature rises, we’re told the election is that important because if the opposition wins, the U.S. as we know it will cease to exist. Lately, we’ve been told that the next election is more important than all the rest because, if the opposition wins, there might not be more elections.

Paul Sracic, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, calls this phenomenon “Armageddon politics,” explaining to me in an email exchange that the danger this attitude poses “lies not just in its rhetoric but in the actions it inspires.”

“When political discourse frames the opposition as a mortal threat, it creates a moral imperative to act beyond the bounds of traditional governance,” Sracic said. “Once these boundaries are breached, the Overton Window shifts, normalizing increasingly extreme actions. Those who warn against such escalation are dismissed as naïve, given what the ‘other side’ has done, and the cycle of retaliation accelerates.”

The other problem …

The other problem with making every election existential is that it’s ridiculous and has been proven demonstrably untrue, over and over again.

President Donald Trump was viewed through this lens by his opponents on both the right and the left in 2016. The midterm elections that followed saw Democrats recapture a majority in the House of Representatives in a 41-seat rout of the GOP. The presidential election that followed delivered a Democratic trifecta: Democrats defended their House majority and recaptured the White House and Senate. Four years later, it was the Republicans who won a governing trifecta.

Not at all what Trump insisted would happen on Jan. 6, 2021, when he urged congressional Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence to overturn Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said that day during a speech at the Ellipse. Meanwhile, the country he insisted wouldn’t exist if he was no longer president is now, by his telling, “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” Maybe there’s a better example of the existential election canard. I have yet to find it.

Elections: refuting hyperbole

To be sure, Trump at times has undermined my argument.

On Monday, he told political ally and podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans should “take over the voting … they ought to nationalize the voting.” And as referenced above, the president tried to overturn the 2020 election. Plus, in the year-plus since Trump’s second inauguration, he has stretched executive authority in ways that are not only particularly alarming for Democrats, but also some Republicans. (The president’s job approval ratings with independents began cratering several months ago.)

But to my point about elections: In 2025, while Trump was turning the Department of Justice into his personal team of attorneys, there was a series of off-year elections. They happened on schedule, as planned, and Democrats romped.

Heck, in a special election in Texas just this past weekend, the Democrats flipped a state senate district that had been drawn to elect Republicans. Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss 57% to 43%, just shy of 15 months after the district backed Trump over Kamala Harris by 17 percentage points.

This is all demonstrable evidence that neither political party has a lock on power and that the country is not irretrievably lost because “the other side” won. So what’s driving our Armageddon mentality — beyond candidates and activists looking for ways to juice voter turnout?

Hyperpartisanship, winner-take-all mentality

Craig J. Calhoun, a social scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, said the culprit in part is a dynamic whereby “hyper-partisanship intersects with a winner-take-all mentality, and both ways of thinking are reinforced by divisions in actual social life.” This is a problem among grassroots conservatives and progressives, as Calhoun detailed. “The Left is not immune to similar predictions of imminent disaster — and efforts to counter them by ‘winning’ rather than de-escalating.”

Indeed, anxiety on the right has a lot to do with the societal divisions referenced by Calhoun, according to Jack A. Goldstone, a public policy expert at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

“It’s the fear that cosmopolitan elites, with WOKE/diversity-driven ideas, want, as Trump would say, to open the borders, push White Christians to the sidelines, and create a world without morals where people of color, Muslims, (maybe Jews too) and perhaps women are given special rights and privileges,” Goldstone told me via email. “That is a false narrative, of course. But has a grain of truth in Democrats’ past policies — and is sufficiently terrifying to lead many ordinary patriotic Americans to treat every election involving Trump as a life-or-death matter.”

All of this has led to a rather mind-boggling situation in Washington.

Reach, overreach, reach, overreach

This century, as power ping-ponged between Democrats and Republicans, I’ve watched each party, newly elected and in charge of fresh majorities in Congress (and sometimes the White House) forge ahead with expansive policy agendas that exceeded the voters’ mandate. Despite having won at the ballot box, sometimes impressively, they conclude that politics, or the opposition’s dirty tricks, will prevent them from winning another election for years, if ever, and set out to enact every policy on their wish list. Voters, repulsed by the overreach, respond by throwing them out of office the very next chance they get.

Perhaps some enterprising Democrat or Republican will come along who exhibits more faith in our constitutional system, governs with the foresight that there are more elections to come than just the next one — and reaps the benefits.

David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”

 

A ray of hope is emerging in American education.

Not among Democrats or Republicans, each diverted by culture wars. Not in the education reform movement, largely abandoned by the philanthropists who once propelled it. Not in most schools across the country, still struggling with chronic absenteeism and a decade of faltering test scores.

Rather, hope emerges in the most unlikely of places: three states here in the Deep South that long represented America’s educational basement. These states — Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — have histories of child poverty, racism and dismal educational outcomes, and they continue to spend less than most other states on public schools.

Yet, consider:

— Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

— The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

— Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

— Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

I wrote about Mississippi’s educational successes in 2023, but many of my fellow liberals then scoffed at the notion of learning from a state so tainted. Skeptics, mostly on the left, have made many critiques of the gains, including that they fade in upper grades, that the states are cheating, that this is all a temporary blip and that any progress is simply a result of holding back weak readers.

The critiques have been effectively rebutted — for starters, they can’t explain the continuing gains in Mississippi or the magnitude of the gains. Just as striking, the Mississippi gains increasingly are being replicated in Alabama and Louisiana, as they follow similar approaches. That’s enormously encouraging, for it suggests that other states can also lift student trajectories if they are willing to learn from Southern red states they may be more accustomed to looking down on.

So I traveled through Mississippi and Alabama to understand the lessons to be learned. Perhaps the most important is an insistence on metrics, accountability and mastery of reading by the end of third grade. And while reading gets the attention, just as important is getting kids to attend school regularly.

Even in the 2023-24 school year, well past the pandemic, some 23% of American schoolchildren were chronically absent — and “they can’t learn if they’re not in the classroom,” Patrick Sutton, superintendent of Marion County Schools in Alabama, told me when I visited his schools.

In classrooms and offices, teachers and administrators frequently mentioned the motivating power of report cards — not the letter grades given out by schools, but those they receive. Alabama gives its schools report cards, based in part on student performance and attendance, with grades that are widely noted in local communities, and these are one more reason to track down missing children.

Schools in Alabama respond firmly when a pupil doesn’t show up. After three unexcused absences, the school suggests a meeting with the parents. After five unexcused absences, school district officials summon parents and warn that they face legal risks if the truancy continues. At seven unexcused absences, the school may refer the parents to the juvenile court.

This can lead to a court appearance before a judge. “They could actually put the parent in jail,” Sutton said, although this seems to be more of a threat than a practice.

The Marion County district is a mining and manufacturing area that lost many jobs, and it wrestles with poverty and addiction. Yet even so, the district slashed chronic absenteeism to 11% in the last school year.

When I visited schools in another high-poverty area, Jasper, Alabama, I got a glimpse of how officials track down truants. A high school senior had recently stopped attending classes after he quarreled with his mother and ran off; nobody seemed to know where he was. So school officials leaned on a buddy of his and were able to geolocate the missing senior on Snapchat: He had taken refuge at the home of a girlfriend 15 miles away.

“We’re going to get him back,” Jonathan Allen, an assistant superintendent, told me confidently. He noted that the school uses every tool available. When students are embarrassed to go to school because of bad hair or teeth, teachers try to find them free haircuts or dental care — whatever it takes.

‘Schools fighting for their students’

What I see is schools fighting for their students. These states have created a structure that closely monitors each school’s performance and incentivizes principals and teachers alike to do everything they can to get kids back in class and learning.

The same incentives push up the region’s high school graduation rates, which are high by national standards — especially considering the high rates of poverty and low levels of parental education.

In Mississippi, where the four-year high school graduation rate is now 89%, the state Department of Education each year must approve a “dropout prevention plan” from each school district. The state education department “office of accountability” publishes lists that shame the 10 school districts with the lowest graduation rates.

What does that kind of accountability mean at the grassroots? In impoverished Leland, Mississippi, in a high school that is almost entirely made up of low-income Black students, I met Tahitianna McCoy, a sophomore who had just taken a $12-an-hour job working 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., Monday through Friday, at a warehouse.

The family needs the money to pay rent and buy food, she said.

Tahitianna would be the first in her family to graduate from high school, but it’s hard to see how she can graduate if she studies by day and works all night.

So her school district’s 11-person “dropout prevention team” has swung into action. Sometimes the team browbeats employers to offer work schedules compatible with class (or sleep), or it may arrange for students to take some classes online. When I visited, the school was optimistic that it could work something out so Tahitianna could stay in school.

Measurement and metrics are particularly evident in strategies to get children to read by the end of third grade.

In Hollandale in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest parts of the country, I met Dyhlan Wooten, an 8-year-old girl in a school where Black students make up 98% of the enrollment. At the beginning of third grade this school year, Dyhlan read at only a first-grade level.

So Dyhlan is pulled out of class along with other lagging readers every day for small-group tutoring in reading. Each child is tested weekly, with scores posted in a green, yellow or red zone, indicating how likely it is that they will pass a big reading test in the spring. (The charts identify pupils by a number, not by name.)

That test is a milestone, for in 2013, Mississippi adopted a third-grade gate — meaning that all third graders must pass a reading test to advance to fourth grade. The state then set up a system to monitor all students beginning in kindergarten to help get them on track to pass the test. Mississippi also revamped its curriculum, invested in pre-K and set up a system to coach teachers to improve their skills.

Dyhlan is determined to learn to read so she can pass the test. Her family is helping her. The teachers want to ensure that all of their children pass. And the principal and superintendent are desperate for Dyhlan and the others to read; children’s ability to read figures significantly into the grade the school gets from the state.

Hollandale’s school district now has a B on its state report card, with a detailed assessment made public and creating accountability in the community. The school report cards light a fire under everyone: It turns out that superintendents will work at least as hard for an A as a student will.

So instead of feeling lost, Dyhlan sees the entire school and community obsessed with helping her read. She’s now in yellow territory. The next week, she told me confidently, she’d be in the green zone.

Astonishing national testing results

For anyone familiar with civil rights history, national testing results are astonishing. A Black Mississippi child is 2 1/2 times as likely to be proficient in reading by fourth grade as a Black California child.

Likewise, low-income children are more likely to test proficient in reading in Mississippi or Louisiana than in California, Massachusetts or New York. A low-income fourth grader is almost twice as likely to test proficient at math in Mississippi as in Oregon.

For many years, skeptics have offered dispiriting arguments about the prospects for educational gains: The way to improve literacy is to fix the family, fix addiction, fix the parents; for as long as the child’s environment is broken, there’s not much else that can be done, the arguments went.

The gains in these states suggest that that critique is wrong. Mississippi and Alabama haven’t fixed child poverty, trauma and deeply troubled communities — but they have figured out how to get kids to read by the end of third grade.

This matters in myriad ways: One recent study found that states with large increases in school test scores enjoyed rising incomes and drops in teen motherhood, incarceration and arrest rates compared with states that didn’t enjoy such gains.

What’s particularly impressive is that the Southern-surge states lifted student achievement with only modest budgets. Spending per pupil in Alabama and Mississippi was below $12,000 in 2024, while in New York it was almost $30,000.

That’s worth celebrating and emulating. Yet, unfortunately, there’s not much sign of that.

Yet, skepticism and indifference

It’s not just that Democrats are skeptical that there’s anything significant to learn from red states. It’s also that Republican leaders themselves seem strangely indifferent.

Indeed, instead of trumpeting the gains in three red states and doubling down on successful policies, Republicans even in these states are pushing hard for more vouchers (which have a mixed record at best) so that children can flee the improving public school systems — thus threatening the very progress they should be proud of. Rather than trying to scale Mississippi’s gains, national Republicans have an education agenda that focuses on transgender children and school bathrooms, demolition of the federal Department of Education and erasure of ugly bits of history. There are many culture war arguments about what books are in the school library, but not enough talk about how to help children read what’s on the shelf.

A common thread in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana has been strong educational leadership, which in turn is able to impose a coherent strategy statewide. This includes “science of reading” curriculums, teacher coaching, measurement of student performance and accountability at all levels. In these states, everyone is rowing together; in Northern school systems, in contrast, there may be more oars, but these often are pulling in different directions.

Expectations, expectations, expectations

Douglas N. Harris, an economist and education expert at Tulane University, said that the three states’ success is based in large part on demanding accountability and raising expectations. “Expectations for students, teachers and schools are central,” he said.

“The debate in education is often framed as a tension between excellence and equity,” Harris added. “I reject that. The system already has lower expectations for disadvantaged students. We need high expectations and standards to give them a better chance.”

In retrospect, I’m afraid that in some parts of the country — particularly blue states — we succumbed to the idea of lowering standards in hopes of improving equity. With warm and fuzzy hopes of reducing race gaps, for example, Oregon reduced graduation requirements, and San Francisco for a time stopped teaching algebra to eighth graders. Some schools embraced “equitable grading” practices such as refusing to give zeros, ending penalties for turning in assignments late and allowing repeated retakes of tests.

These strike me as examples of what President George W. Bush called the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Our liberal leniency went off the rails in other ways, including grade inflation and a general coddling of students: Recent cohorts of high school students have simultaneously had rising GPAs and falling ACT scores, and at Harvard University, 60% of grades in the last academic year were A’s. Colleges have accepted dubious claims of disability so that students can, for example, get extra time for tests. The Atlantic reports that 38% of Stanford University undergraduates are registered as having a disability.

The University of California San Diego reported a surge in the number of freshmen who hadn’t even mastered middle school math — even though more than a quarter of them had high school math GPAs of 4.0.

The Southern-surge states take an approach that is closer to the opposite. Disadvantaged students get extra help but are pushed to succeed on the same terms as everyone else, for that is what the adult job market will demand.

“There’s no excuses, right?” said Mary Kennedy, an elementary school principal in Hackleburg, Alabama. I heard that repeatedly. Sutton, the Marion County school superintendent, told me that the “secret sauce” behind the Southern surge is quite simply “no excuses.”

“We no longer accept that our kids can’t compete with anybody in the world,” he added.

Wake up, liberals

Thomas Kane, an education expert at Harvard, believes that the national gloom about education is overdone, partly because the three out-performers show what is possible, just as earlier periods of improvement in Massachusetts, Florida and Tennessee underscored the power of evidence-based policies and meticulous execution.

“States around the country have a lot to learn from what Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are doing,” he said.

We liberals need to wake up to the reality that we are being outperformed on education, opportunity and racial equity — supposedly our issues. As recently as 2019, blue states had better average test scores than red states, after adjusting for demographics; now, red states are mostly ahead. We used to say that education was the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and if so, we should be ashamed that by that metric, Mississippi Republicans are ahead of California Democrats. If we care about kids, we must be relentlessly empirical, and that must mean a willingness to learn from red states.

Kane said something you don’t expect to hear from a Harvard professor: “I hope that there are lots of governors that are looking at Mississippi and saying, ‘Look, I want us to be next.’”

Nicholas Kristof writes for the New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.