Marietta Helped Write the Playbook Behind Georgia's New Literacy Law

MARIETTA, Ga. – When Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB 1193, the Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026, into law on May 5, Georgia became the latest state to require literacy coaches in every K-3 elementary school. Marietta City Schools has had them since 2021. The Marietta model is one of the reasons the bill exists.

That work was featured Monday night on Your Fantastic Mind on Georgia Public Broadcasting. The episode steps inside MCS classrooms and shows what the science of reading, also known as structured literacy, looks like when it actually reaches kids.

"When people ask what a literacy coach does, I tell them to watch our teachers work," said Mary Hannah Gaddis, Director of Literacy at Marietta City Schools. "The way the teachers interact with and engage with our students has likely been modeled by one of our literacy coaches. The coaches work side by side with our teachers to demonstrate techniques and refine instruction."

Since launching Literacy and Justice for All (LJFA) in 2021, the district has moved its readers faster than the state and faster than its neighbors:

• Third-grade reading scores are up 17 points from 2022 to 2025 — compared to one point statewide and a four-point drop in Cobb County.
• The share of MCS students reading at or above grade level has climbed 11 percentage points since LJFA launched, outpacing metro Atlanta and the state.
• English Learner students gained 30.8 percent in Lexile performance between second and third grade in a single year.

Data from 2019-2024 show a 90% reduction in classroom disruptions since the program launched, according to Dr. Jillian Johnson, principal of A.L. Burruss Elementary.

"Children are getting exactly what they need, the way they need it," Johnson said. "Children want to learn."

The literacy coach model targets the gap between curriculum and classroom by pairing trained literacy experts with teachers while lessons are happening in real time. The model helped MCS fully transition away from balanced literacy to structured literacy, which second-grade teacher Allison Taylor defined as "a systematic and explicit way to teach students to read."

Taylor further explained in Monday's episode, "We know that children learn to read using sounds, using letters, and then creating those sounds and letters to make words, and then those words to make sentences, and then those sentences to build fluency, and then that fluency to build comprehension.”