By Ashly Hospodka

ACWORTH, Ga. – “It was hard for me to keep up and learn from home,” Liam Roberts said. “I couldn’t pay attention to my work, and I didn’t get much help with reading, and I am not very good at reading already.”

Liam Roberts, 10, sits there doodling on a piece of white printer paper. He is drawing one of his favorite horror movie characters as he describes what his school career has been like for him as a fourth-grader. Liam has always taken to math and art classes, but reading has been a struggle for him.

After COVID-19, the gap between Liam’s literacy skills and where they needed to be for his age group became too wide.

His mom, Mariah Roberts, said that when her, her husband and Liam’s teacher made the decision to hold him back in the third grade, a year that is pivotal for reading in early education, it was tough. But everyone involved knew it was important to make sure he had the fundamental skills of literacy before moving on to the next grade.

“It was very difficult [during COVID-19] as all school took place over a computer screen and was very distracting in my opinion,” Roberts said. “We would get on for one to two hours in the morning and then log back on again later in the day. I didn’t like it, and I feel that my kids weren’t able to learn at all that way.”

Roberts experienced what many other parents noticed during the pandemic: their kids were falling behind and not retaining fundamental skills.

Georgia’s House of Representatives took notice of students like Liam and passed a bill that directly addresses the need for an updated reading program in schools all over the state.

Learn to read, read to learn

In an attempt to rectify the damage done by COVID-19 and to fix the systemic issue of low literacy, Georgia House Representative Bethany Ballard spearheaded the 2023 House Bill 538, also known as the Georgia Early Literacy Act.

“My goal is to ensure that our state’s children will be able to read proficiently by the end of third grade so they will be able to spend the rest of their lives reading to learn,” Ballard said.

The Georgia Early Literacy Act went into effect on Aug. 1, 2024, at the beginning of this school year. It requires all kindergarten through third grade teachers to teach the science of reading, foundational literacy skills and will require reading intervention plans for struggling students, among many other initiatives.

Caty Mae Loomis, third and fourth grade special education teacher at Oak Grove Elementary in Acworth thinks that for a long time, the focus on teaching students phonics and instructing on the science of reading has taken a backseat.

“But that’s kind of changing now because we’re getting back into the science of reading and less into just whole literacy, so it’s helping the children who need it learn phonics,” says Loomis, educator of six years.

Roberts felt that teachers and the education system did little to help Liam with literacy.

“To me, it seemed like teachers weren’t interested in helping any students that had fallen back due to Covid situations,” Roberts said.

Loomis stated that teachers are paying attention to students that are struggling with learning how to read.

“We assess pretty much constantly, just seeing what kids can do during whole group lessons and small group lessons so sometimes it can be anecdotal assessments,” Loomis said. “But usually, it’s just when kids display what they can do, we take notice.”

When asked what specifically teachers are doing now that are different than before, Loomis said, “We are using decodables as reading texts now and less guided reading instruction so that really hones in on a specific skill that kids need instead of reading as a whole.”

“These new programs allow us the ability to more finely tune and target what students need instead of just reading a book and talking about it,” Loomis said. “Like here’s this vowel team, or here’s this blend we need to practice, and those have been helpful for remediation.”

As a teacher of students with learning disabilities and special educational needs, Loomis is used to working with students that may need more specialized instruction.

“Strategies that are used for students with disabilities can also be used for students who are just struggling with certain skills,” Loomis said.

This could be a solution for students like Liam, who struggle with specific skills and need to be taught through a different approach.

“I think every kid is so different and it’s interesting to see that click happen,” Loomis said. “What’s really cool though is when kids start applying what they’ve learned with you to different things, so like ‘I recognize this in this space so let me apply it to math or in ELA’ so that’s a cool thing to see.”

Lifelong struggle

The programs created from this bill show that Georgia lawmakers are looking towards Georgia’s economic future.

Poor education and low literacy skills can be detrimental when these children reach adulthood, according to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. That is why fixing low literacy rates as early as in elementary school is important.

“It [low literacy] has a direct impact on our economic well-being,” Ballard said. “As a former educator and a parent of two boys, I know all too well the challenges we have in our classrooms.”

One in 10 adults in Georgia have low literacy skills as of 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. This is almost 800,000 adults in the state of Georgia alone.

Ballard and the General Assembly of Georgia found that third grade is the year students go from learning to read to reading to learn and that missing out on this skill contributes to high school drop-out rates.

Most of the adults that are categorized with low literacy skills have not completed high school or an equivalent. Without a high school diploma, it can become very hard to find well-paid work or work in general according to a Deloitte report from 2023.

Not graduating high school is correlated with not having literacy skills early on. If students cannot comprehend the meaning of a book or article, they will not be able to complete high school-level assignments, according to Ballard.

Additionally, “adults with low literacy in Georgia earn about one million dollars less across their lifetime than adults with a high school degree” based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If children do not learn literacy skills, their potential in the workforce is limited proven through statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

Nationwide Literacy Struggles

Georgia is not the only state to have reformed its literacy programs in the past year to address problems made more obvious during the pandemic years.

In 2023, nine states other than Georgia passed reformed science of reading bills. These states include, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virgina and Wisconsin.

Nine other states have also passed reading reform legislation between 2019 and 2023, according to the Albert Shanker Institute. This makes a total of 18 states in the past five years to recognize failing literacy programs that contribute to “persistent reading deficits in American students,” from the Shanker Institute Reading Reform Survey.

National examples of reading reform show why Georgia’s Early Literacy Act is an important piece of legislation in the Department of Education’s fight to fix country-wide literacy rates.

Parents closing the gap

“I think the biggest hurdle for this bill to overcome would be teachers being open to change and new things,” Loomis said. “It can be hard to relearn how to teach and review different strategies and try new things. But we have such a different group of kids now than there’s ever been, so we really do need to figure out what’s going to work for them.”

Leaning on the parents to fill in the gaps where the teachers cannot, may be the most important factor after reading reform, according to Loomis.

“We like to assign, not a lot of homework, but reading as homework because I think just reading everyday with your kid is the most helpful thing possible,” Loomis said. “And then, providing a space in the school for parents to have resources or for if they have any questions.”

According to a study by Jessica Logan, assistant professor of educational studies at Ohio State University, there is a 1-million-word gap between five-year-old kids who were read five books every day by their parents than those who were not.

Parental intervention is immensely important for children’s ability to pick up literacy skills and increase their vocab, according to Logan.

“Not every school has the funding for that, but when they do it’s really helpful to get parents in the building and seeing what we do,” Loomis said. “Parents want to hear from their kids’ teachers, so just making sure teachers are having an open line of communication.”

Positive environment

Since the reforms in Georgia’s literacy programs, Liam was able to surpass his reading goals on his first test.

“My teacher has gotten me to like reading more by just being more patient with me,” Liam said. “It felt really good and helped my confidence when I passed my test.”

The combination of parental involvement, a caring teacher and the specialized science of reading curriculum seemed to be exactly what Liam needed to succeed, according to his mother.

“Now, we absolutely love Liam’s teacher Ms. McCoy. She tells him on a daily basis that she is proud of his accomplishments so far this year,” Roberts said. “No other teacher has helped his confidence as much as her. He is succeeding and we are so proud of him.”