Low literacy linked to Georgia’s incarceration crisis, decades after federal warning

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Thirty years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice warned that the failure to learn to read was not just linked to delinquency, but a likely cause of it.

That prediction is playing out today across Georgia, where low literacy rates remain persistent and incarceration rates remain the highest of any democratic country in the world.

“It’s 100% a link,” said Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith. “If you don’t have literacy and you don’t have an education, you are walking down a path of recidivism [and] criminal activity.”

An Atlanta News First investigation has explored the connection between Georgia’s literacy crisis and its overpopulated jails and prisons, revealing how inadequate reading instruction in schools may be setting up thousands of children for failure, and in some cases, a future behind bars.

Reading Reset | An Atlanta News First investigation

• Lawmakers bill banning controversial teaching method
• Lawsuit claims schools purchased reading material that hurt children
• Georgia State University accused of using debunked teaching method

Georgia’s fourth-grade reading scores have never reached proficiency benchmarks since at least 1998, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. At the same time, Georgia incarcerates 968 out of every 100,000 people — the highest rate in the U.S., and higher than any free democratic nation, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

A 1993 DOJ report titled Reduced Recidivism and Increased Employment Opportunity Through Research-Based Reading Instruction documented a “strong link between academic failure and delinquency,” with researchers concluding that “reading failure is most likely a cause, not just a correlate” of criminal behavior.

“In our society, school is the only major legitimate activity for children between the ages of 6 and 18,” the report warned. “If a child fails in school, generally there is little else in which he can be successful.”

The DOJ’s research placed significant blame on universities and colleges for miseducating future teachers. “Most teachers have little or no knowledge of phonetics or intensive, systematic phonics programs,” the report stated, adding that many professors denied the effectiveness of phonics-based instruction altogether.

The result, according to the DOJ, is that reading teachers “inadvertently victimize their students with less effective, if not ineffective, reading instruction.”

Shannon Hammond, a former elementary school teacher and school said she witnessed this firsthand. “The word ‘victimized’ seems like such a strong word, but it’s true,” said Hammond. “We are crippling our young learners by not teaching them how to read.”

Hammond is now executive director of Adult Literacy Barrow which partners with the Barrow County Detention Center to help detainees earn their GED.

One of those former detainees includes Kayla Hill, who once cycled in and out of Barrow County’s detention center for six years due to drug-related charges. The 33-year-old says couldn’t read proficiently, a fact that haunted her since elementary school.

“I being in Miss Horton’s class at Beaumont Elementary,” Hill said. “They were going around the room reading and I had no idea where they were or what they were saying.” What changed her life was access to the GED program while incarcerated.

Today, Hill is sober, free, and a welding instructor at Lanier Technical College. “It gave me something to tell my kids that I’ve done for myself, that I was proud of,” she said. “It is probably the biggest moment in my life.”

Despite mounting evidence and decades of research, change has come slowly. Thirty years after the DOJ’s report, a 2023 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) gave 191 teacher preparation programs across 44 states a failing grade for their reading instruction, including seven institutions in Georgia: Georgia Southern University, Columbus State University, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, Gordon State College, Augusta University and the University of North Georgia.

After identifying what it called debunked reading methods in course material, the report said, “Too many teachers are not training in scientifically based reading instruction.”

“The reason that we called them contrary practices is because they run counter to the science,” said Heather Peske, NCTQ president. “These are instructional techniques that have actually been debunked by the science; techniques that, in fact, are not good for kids in learning to read.”

Peske said the consequences of future teachers learning these contrary practices can be detrimental to students and the state’s education system. “It means that the teachers aren’t successful,” she said. “That’s a big part of the reason why in Georgia right now, only one in three fourth graders are reading proficiently.”

The University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public colleges, did not agree with NCTQ’s findings, writing the group “relies on flawed research methodology.”

But lawmakers, including state Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, and state Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, are pushing for ability. They believe the state should audit college programs to determine if they’re doing it right. “My favorite quote from Ronald Reagan is, ‘Trust, but ,’” Hickman said.

Public school systems are currently implementing a new reading curriculum mandated by state lawmakers two years ago they hope will improve literacy rates. Earlier this week, Georgia lawmakers also ed new legislation that could remove controversial teaching methods that studies have shown hurt children’s ability to read.

Ballard, a former English teacher, authored the legislation. It would ban the “three cueing” teaching method, which has been used for decades in the state to help children learn to read. The method encourages students to sample the letters and the words in the text, relying mostly on prediction and context for comprehension with the help of pictures.

Ballard says the bill would not prohibit teachers from using picture books. “All of this can be used as supplemental material in the classroom, but they may not be used as the primary means of instruction,” Ballard said during a February state House Education Committee meeting. That legislation is pending the governor’s signature.

State Sen. RaShawn Kemp, D-Atlanta, authored a companion bill. “When you have a 70% rate of students not reading on grade level, that is an emergency five alarm fire across all areas,” said Kemp, a former school teacher and principal.

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