Editor’s note: Twenty-five years ago this week, Jim Barksdale and his late wife Sally gave the state of Mississippi $100 million to create a program aimed at boosting public school reading. We asked Claiborne Barksdale, Jim’s brother who led the organization tasked with implementing the program, to reflect on the historic investment, the reading initiative and its successes.
Jim and Sally Barksdale were living in Palo Alto, California, in the late 1990s. This was in the midst of the dotcom boom, and Jim had been very fortunate to be part of that boom as president and CEO of Netscape. He had become involved with public education in California, working closely with then-Gov. Pete Wilson on foundational issues such as early-child challenges, and, more specifically, reading.
Thankful for their good fortune, Jim and Sally had funded the Honors College at the University of Mississippi in 1997. They wanted to do something more to help.
So one day Jim called then-Mississippi Education Superintendent Richard Thompson and discussed the possibility of their working together to attack the persistent issue of reading failures in the state. Jim understood the challenge from a personal level — he’d had difficulty learning to read when he was a little boy. What could they do?
Dr. Thompson told Jim about a pilot project the state had launched called the Mississippi Reading Reform Model. The project, aimed at training in-school teachers to improve their literacy instruction, had been tested in a number of school districts around the state and had shown promising results. Jim and Sally considered the issue of great significance: If you can’t read, your lifelong opportunities are going to be very limited. The challenge was complex, with innumerable variables — one that required a business-like approach to what appeared to be an intractable problem.
They came to Jackson and met with Dr. Thompson. He asked Jim and Sally to consider an annual donation to the state Department of Education to fund an expansion of the project. Jim and Sally proposed instead that they commit $100 million to the effort, with one significant caveat: The money would be run through an independent entity, not through MDE.
Jim, a hands-on type, wanted to have say-so in all of the key issues as to how the program was established, manned and run. He didn’t want to run the program, but he wanted to make sure that it was run well. He insisted on demonstrable, quantifiable results. He was particularly interested in accountability. He and Sally made it clear that the commitment was not a gift but an investment. They wanted a healthy return on their investment or they would cease funding and find another way to help.
In late 1999, with Jim and Sally’s commitment, the Barksdale Reading Institute was created. From its inception, BRI focused on phonics-based instruction: Too many children were showing up in kindergarten and in the first grade with little-to-no concepts of print, didn’t realize that letters conveyed sounds, and lacked basic vocabulary and comprehension skills. Equally troubling, many teachers had not been taught how to teach those vital skills. The challenge was daunting.
The National Reading Panel, which had been established in 1997 and had issued its seminal report in 2000, formed the basis for many of the strategies employed by BRI. Above all, the work to be done had to be “evidence-based,” had to be focused on explicit, sequential instruction, and had to be differentiated. Literacy instruction had to meet the students where they were.
In 2000 work began with participating elementary schools and with the schools of education at the eight public universities in the state. No one thought this would be easy, and it wasn’t. Thanks to BRI, the state’s required curriculum for teaching pre-service teachers how to teach reading was strengthened considerably. At the elementary school level, many approaches were tried. As Jim pointed out, Edison went through almost a thousand filaments before he found the right one for the light bulb. But the institute was nimble. Jim and Sally were patient, and lessons were learned.
Until its sunset in 2023, BRI worked with national, state and local education leaders, principals, teachers, preschool programs and parents. The work continues today in Mississippi through the Mississippi Reading Clinic and around the nation with previously established partners such as WETA, the education network in Washington, D.C. With WETA, the web-based Reading Universe, developed by BRI, has been established and is being visited regularly by teachers in over two hundred countries around the world.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, thanks to BRI’s work, in conjunction with the Third-Grade Gate passed by the state Legislature and implemented by MDE, fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, have risen from dead last in the country to 21st as of 2022. The state ranks second in its reading scores for children in poverty and seventh for children from households of color. States from across the country seek advice and input based on what has been called “The Mississippi Miracle.”
Tens of thousands of Mississippi children are reading, and reading proficiently, thanks to Jim and Sally’s persistent desire to help them achieve a brighter future.
I’d say that’s a pretty damn good return on their investment.
Claiborne Barksdale practiced private and corporate law for 25 years then ran the Barksdale Reading Institute from 2000-2015. He lives in Oxford.
Editor’s note: Jim and Donna Barksdale are Mississippi Today donors and founding board members. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.
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