When Heather Perry asked her third grade class at Warren T. Jackson Elementary last week what they love about her literacy lessons, a sprinkling of hands shot up into the air.
One student noted the way Perry uses mnemonic devices like songs, chants, or popular TV characters to aid in conveying and retaining information. Another referenced the supplied agenda planners that help with staying organized.
“You always go back if we aren’t understanding,” remarked another young learner on Thursday.
The considered and attentive teaching methods seem to be working for Black students at Jackson, who are testing at levels that far outpace the average scores of their counterparts at other Atlanta Public Schools.
“We are so lucky,” Jackson’s newly appointed principal, Allyson Atwell, told Capital B Atlanta. “We truly have students who show up every day to learn, and their families are 100% behind that.”
Those successes, however, lie in contrast to the overall testing of Black third graders in Atlanta Public Schools, who, by and large, are struggling. Released last month, the Georgia Milestones Assessment System (GMAS) scores for the 2023-2024 school year revealed 54% of the district’s Black third graders were reading at beginning level, the lowest tier.
It’s a slight decrease from the 56% percent of Black students who were reading at a beginning level in spring 2023. In comparison to white third grade students, the discrepancy is vast: Only 4% of white third graders are reading at beginning leader level, while 45% are considered distinguished leaders, the highest level.
GMAS is a standardized testing program for K-12 students in Georgia that assesses student achievement in alignment with the state’s educational standards. Students are tested on an array of subjects, including math, English/language arts, science, and social studies. There are four levels of proficiency in content mastery for Milestones ELA testing: beginning leader, developing leader, proficient leader, and distinguished leader.
In the majority-Black school district, which serves a population where more than 70% of students are economically disadvantaged, only about 6% of Black third graders were reading at distinguished levels, according to state testing results released last month.
Literacy has been a long-standing issue for Georgia students, particularly those in Atlanta Public Schools, where less than 30% of students are reading on grade level, according to previous testing data. Those rates have been stagnant in the district for nearly three decades, even as graduation rates rose to 86% for the class of 2023.
What’s working at Jackson?
Despite the district’s overall Milestones underperformance, Black third graders at Jackson, by all accounts, are thriving.
The recent GMAS data shows 59% of Jackson’s Black third graders were reading at distinguished levels, while 29% were reading at a proficient level. No Black third graders scored at the developing level — a stark improvement from the 41% who scored in that tier in 2022.
Of the approximately 460 students who attend Jackson, nearly 25% are Black, according to Georgia’s College and Career Ready Performance Index. While the school primarily services students in APS’ North Atlanta cluster, Atwell said Jackson receives a mixture of students who are shuttled through APS’ school choice program, which allows parents to send their children to schools around the district, no matter their ZIP code.
Atwell says the district is supporting new educational materials and initiatives, like Jackson’s literacy coach, who specializes in the science of reading, and continued partnerships with local resources like the Atlanta Speech School, a local institution devoted to young students with learning challenges.
“APS has been laying a lot of this groundwork for nearly eight years,” Atwell said. “So, we have been pushing our educators to continue to learn and grow here. We’ve spent time making sure our professional development is meaningful for our educators and that they have all the tools they need to implement the new strategies they are learning directly into their classroom.”
$11.8 million of Atlanta Public Schools’ recently passed $1.8 billion budget for the 2025 fiscal year is dedicated to literacy initiatives, a nod to the imperative the district has placed on improving reading levels among its roughly 50,000 students. A portion of this investment funds literacy coaches for each of its 55 elementary schools, while an additional $9 million will support special education services.
Atwell also said Jackson has been addressing external factors that contribute to learning, like revitalizing the student population after the return from the COVID-19 pandemic and recruiting families back into the building.
“These third graders we have now were the COVID kindergartners,” Atwell said. “When they returned, we had to address social and emotional behaviors and get them back into the stamina of a long school day. We also lost quite a few of our students during that period of remote learning, so we’ve been actively recruiting to get our community back inside our classrooms.”
How is Atlanta Public Schools supporting students elsewhere?
APS has been proactively addressing literacy issues through initiatives such as a pilot program called Literacy and Justice for All, which debuted at some of its elementary sites after the program’s success in nearby Marietta City Schools.
Comer Yates, executive director of the Rollins Center at Atlanta Speech School, which oversees the program, told Capital B Atlanta in July that literacy issues often unveil a deeper issue that is prevalent at the community level, rather than just a district issue.
“It’s not just the district that’s struggling with literacy,” said Yates. “It’s a city or community that has denied children access to educational opportunity for the most unfair, unconscionable reasons possible, and realizing that to break that cycle, you have to bring forces, resources, and precision to the effort that exceeds the forces that have denied their children and their parents.”
For this school year, APS launched Readers Are Leaders, a district-designed initiative that centers the five pillars of the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The initiative is tied to the passage of House Bill 538, known as the Georgia Early Literacy Act, which requires districts to fund training for kindergarten through third grade teachers in the science of reading.
Carlesha Johnson, whose son attends Hope-Hill Elementary in Old Fourth Ward, says she feels the district is taking active steps to address its long-standing literacy issues.
“I can see a difference in my kid’s reading skills,” she told Capital B Atlanta. “I can see enthusiasm from him when he is coming home from a day of school, and that, to me, means he is enjoying what he is learning during the day.”
Johnson also says Hope-Hill staff has been working with families to ensure they are in the know about things happening in the classroom, a gesture she feels is important to keep parents connected.
“They have opened the doors a lot to us to stay on top of what our kids are doing,” she said. “Curriculum nights, progress conferences with us — I just feel like we are all working together to make sure our babies are doing the best they can.”
In neighboring districts across the metro area, Black third grade students struggled similarly. In Fulton County, only 10% of Black third graders were distinguished leaders. To the east, in DeKalb County, that number decreased to 7%. To the south, in Clayton County, only 5% of Black students were distinguished leaders.
To the northwest, in Cobb County, 11% of Black third graders scored in the top percentile, and northeast, in Gwinnett County, there was a slight increase to 14%.
