ATLANTA — The State of Georgia is about to change the way it teaches students how to read.
After weeks of debate in the Georgia General Assembly, the state senate passed its version of a new literacy bill supported by Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns.
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot was at the state capitol to hear from lawmakers about what the bill will mean for Georgia school children.
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Right now, less than 30% of Georgia third graders read at their grade level.
The literacy bill will change the way they’re taught, focusing on phonics.
The main hold up in the legislature has been how to pay for it.
Now, the House of Representatives and Senate have figured that out.
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After weeks of intense negotiations and a last-minute procedural hiccup, the Georgia Senate passed the literacy bill unanimously.
Both Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers recognized there was a serious issue that needed fixing, since only 29% of third graders are reading at level.
“I am tickled to death, but you know, this thing started as I said, over three years ago, working on literacy, and this is just kind of icing on the cake,” State Sen. Billy Hickman told Channel 2 Action News.
But it’s a cake that nearly went bad.
Burns started off the legislative session making literacy one of his top priorities.
The House developed its own version of the bill, which called for more than 1,300 literacy coaches in every single public school in Georgia.
The two chambers of the legislature were at odds over how to fit that into the budget.
State Sen. Blake Tillery’s version of the bill has the state pay for them. He said Tuesday that the House and Senate had reached a compromise.
“The senate’s version puts $70 million toward the classroom, toward coaches, about $40 million more than the House’s version,” Tillery said. “We were able to eliminate a little bit of the bureaucracy.”
Tillery and Burns both say Georgia will now focus on teaching kids phonics to help them read, a method that took the state of Mississippi from 48th to sixth in the nation.
Hickman said better literacy will mean better students, and have impacts on a variety of societal issues.
“As we increase literacy rates in Georgia, chronic absenteeism rates go down, crime goes down, teenage pregnancy goes down,” Hickman said. “Bullying goes down. If children can read, they want to go to class. The ones that can’t read are the ones that don’t want to do the class.”
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