This Elected Woman is Getting Georgia Ready for Back-to-School

But let's get again a little bit more into education.

So there is a lot of movement in Georgia on education.

There's some good policy, bad policy.

Share with us what's going on.

Well, of course, I want to share the good policy.

Yes.

No, yeah.

You

know, one of the things that's so weird for me when I first got elected, you know, I was like, hey, we're going to, you know, revive education in Georgia.

And I was told that's not, you know, that wasn't my role as a legislator.

And then I learned, yes, it is.

Right.

So I will say the last three years, Georgia has finally realized that we have to make literacy a priority.

Right.

And we saw where states I think like think Massachusetts had some improvement and Mississippi.

Right.

And so even though Georgia had a priority that our students would be reading on grade level by third grade, but we had never really put a plan in place what that would look like.

I think three years ago, we finally passed legislation where we would do evidence-based literacy.

However, even though we passed the legislation where literacy is now a priority, We didn't do the two things that we saw made a difference in states where they had seen literacy improvement.

One was the literacy coaches and two, of course, was funding.

So we passed the legislation that we would do evidence-based literacy

education.

Then we came back the next year and we put legislation in place where we would do literacy coaches education.

However, the coaches was at the state school board level and it was only a handful of them that was going to be responsible for going out to the state to see school.

It's not a small state.

But let's get again a little bit more into education.

So there is a lot of movement in Georgia on education.

There's some good policy, bad policy.

Share with us what's going on.

Well, of course, I want to share the good policy.

Yes.

No, yeah.

You

know, one of the things that's so weird for me when I first got elected, you know, I was like, hey, we're going to, you know, revive education in Georgia.

And I was told that's not, you know, that wasn't my role as a legislator.

And then I learned, yes, it is.

Right.

So I will say the last three years, Georgia has finally realized that we have to make literacy a priority.

Right.

And we saw where states I think like think Massachusetts had some improvement and Mississippi.

Right.

And so even though Georgia had a priority that our students would be reading on grade level by third grade, but we had never really put a plan in place what that would look like.

I think three years ago, we finally passed legislation where we would do evidence-based literacy.

However, even though we passed the legislation where literacy is now a priority, We didn't do the two things that we saw made a difference in states where they had seen literacy improvement.

One was the literacy coaches and two, of course, was funding.

So we passed the legislation that we would do evidence-based literacy

education.

Then we came back the next year and we put legislation in place where we would do literacy coaches education.

However, the coaches was at the state school board level and it was only a handful of them that was going to be responsible for going out to the state to see school.

It's not a small state.