“We are seeing our kids grow in their reading … kids are coming to us from kindergarten after having the science of reading so much more fluently than our kids ever had before.”
This was the response from a first grade teacher in Marietta City Schools when I asked about the impact of the reforms in reading instruction she and her colleagues across the district began implementing in 2021. Educators in the Fulton County School District and Grady County Schools, who are also changing how they teach reading, made similar comments.
My colleagues and I at the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education recently completed a case study, “Rewriting How Reading is Taught,” to understand how these three districts are transforming reading instruction. Learning from their experiences is particularly important following the passage of the Georgia Early Literacy Act in 2023, which requires districts across the state to make similar changes in reading instruction.
Credit: Con
Credit: Con
Leaders in these three districts recognized that too many of their students were not becoming skilled readers, which created barriers to their success in other subject areas and life after graduation. Each leader turned to structured literacy, an approach to reading instruction that is grounded in a body of research often called the science of reading. After years of disagreement, consensus has grown among researchers that structured literacy is the most effective way to teach reading.
Under the structured literacy approach, teachers provide explicit and systematic instruction in the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
For many educators, this approach is very different from how they were trained to teach reading, which often lacked emphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics. Mastering structured literacy and using it in their classrooms is a significant change.
For this case study, we visited each participating district and talked to classroom teachers, instructional coaches, principals, district leaders and other educators. Despite their differences in location, size and student demographics, we found that leaders in each district designed a comprehensive plan for reform that shared key components. These include new instructional resources, such as classroom curriculum, that align with structured literacy. They also assess students’ reading progress frequently so teachers can identify students who need extra help and those ready to move ahead and match their instructional strategies to each student.
Perhaps most importantly, these districts equipped classroom teachers with what they needed to become better reading teachers: focused training and professional development. Each district provided intensive training to teachers in early grades as well as to instructional coaches, principals, district leaders and other educators. The training combined in-person sessions with online sessions educators completed on their own time. Recognizing the investment of personal time, the districts provided stipends when teachers completed the training.
The districts also placed full-time instructional coaches in each elementary school. Coaches support teachers during training, ensuring they don’t fall behind and helping them understand content. They assist teachers in applying what they are learning in the training to their instructional practice by modeling new reading strategies, helping plan when and how to use the strategies and providing feedback when teachers try them in the classroom.
To support both teachers and coaches, each district also added literacy experts to their central office teams. These experts provide training and support to coaches, offer additional help to teachers who are struggling and assist principals in all the elements of reading reform in their schools.
Leaders in Fulton, Grady and Marietta readily acknowledge their work is not done. Transforming reading instruction and helping all students become skilled readers isn’t a quick or easy undertaking. Nor is it inexpensive. The leaders of each district, who were focused on improving reading instruction before the COVID-19 pandemic, used federal pandemic relief funds as well as other grants to design and implement their comprehensive reading reform plans. They would have pursued reading reform without federal relief funds, but reform would have looked very different, and progress would have been significantly slower. Federal relief funds expired in September.
With the 2025 legislative session quickly approaching, state policymakers and education leaders have an opportunity to provide additional resources to districts across the state so they too can take a comprehensive approach to reading reform.
A principal in Fulton County captured the value of doing so when reflecting on the changes underway in her school, “All of this long term is reducing high school dropout rates, that’s the longevity of the work we’re doing right now … the children are thriving, and parents are on board.”
Claire Suggs is a senior research consultant for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education.
