A bipartisan education initiative aimed at improving reading skills among young public school students in Georgia will go into effect this year after Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law Tuesday, along with a package of additional education bills.
The Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026 represents a sweeping overhaul of prior efforts targeting literacy and dyslexia. The measure, a top priority of House Speaker Jon Burns, expands requirements for curriculum, teacher training, and student testing.
It also adds approximately $70 million to the formula that drives state education funding, enough to support hiring a classroom literacy coach in more than 1,300 schools serving kindergarten through third grade.
“This bill is a monumental step in our years-long work to ensure students have the literacy skills they need,” Kemp said before signing House Bill 1193.
The governor also signed eight additional education bills, including House Bill 1009, which will ban cellphones in public high schools beginning with the 2027–28 school year.
The legislation expands a similar ban passed last year covering kindergarten through middle school. Although the lower-grade ban does not take effect until the upcoming school year, many schools have already implemented local restrictions on personal devices.
Surveys of parents and teachers in many districts last fall indicated the bans were broadly popular, and studies have also shown academic gains associated with removing the devices from classrooms.
Among the other measures signed by Kemp are bills requiring public schools to expand access to after-school programs for pre-kindergarten students (House Bill 1123), strengthening coordination between public schools and “completion schools” offering credit recovery for at-risk students (House Bill 907), and expanding a program allowing retired teachers to return to the classroom for pay while continuing to collect pensions (Senate Bill 150).
The literacy act is the most expansive of the package.
Beginning this summer, the state will be required to identify at least one standardized test to determine whether incoming students are reading on grade level.
By fall, state leaders will convene a literacy task force to review and approve reading curricula for statewide use, with at least one option made available to districts at no cost. The instructional methods will be grounded in phonics and in what proponents describe as the “science of reading” and “structured literacy,” approaches based on decades of educational research.