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Georgia’s low literacy rate can be fixed despite the dismal statistics currently plaguing educators, the head of a council of state legislators, literacy experts, teachers, and school district officials said Tuesday.
“We will not shrink back from our mission,” Scott Johnson, chairman of the Georgia Council on Literacy, said at the 30-member panel’s second meeting on the campus of Kennesaw State University. “We will not fail.”
The General Assembly created the council this year to look for ways to improve literacy in Georgia. Under legislation that cleared the legislature unanimously last March, the panel has until the end of 2026 to achieve its goal.
As it begins its work, the council is facing some discouraging numbers. Fifty-six percent of Georgia third graders cannot read proficiently, Bill Reed, a partner in the consulting firm Deloitte, told council members Tuesday.
Students who can’t read are more likely to drop out of school at a time when 75% of new jobs expected to be created by 2028 require at least some post-secondary education, Reed said.
Johnson said he’s encouraged by the success educators both inside Georgia and out of state are having with efforts to improve literacy.
Two years ago, the Marietta City School District launched a program that involved hiring two reading coaches for each of the district’s eight elementary schools, as well as 37 reading specialists to work with students at a ratio of one to 10.
The program identifies students in grades one through five who aren’t reading at grade level and gives them 90 minutes of direct reading instruction five days a week, Superintendent Grant Rivera said. Students who need extra help also are offered four and a half hours of tutoring each week after school, he…
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