Improving Georgia Milestones reading scores starts in 1st grade

Year after year, the Georgia Milestones Assessment System (GMAS) test scores show far too few Georgia 3rd graders are reading at proficient levels. Where should district and school leaders be looking to reverse that trend? 

It’s a lot earlier than you might think. Two whole years earlier. 

That question of timing matters for kids in Georgia, perhaps more now than ever before.

Georgia’s HB1193, the Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026, was signed into law by Governor Kemp in May, and districts across the state are facing a raft of new mandates that emphasize starting earlier to address literacy struggles before they start.

Pair that with a increasing amount of research into the best time for early literacy intervention, and the 1st grade window has become a clear place to look for Georgia districts that need to improve their 3rd grade reading results.

So, how do you give your 1st graders the reading start they need for future success on the Georgia Milestones Assessment and beyond? To get there, we need to start with a look at reading scores in Georgia today.

Georgia Milestones reading test scores today

Georgia’s most recent Reading Readiness scores, released in August 2025 for the 2024-25 school year, show that more than a third of Georgia’s 3rd graders did not meet reading proficiency levels on the English Language Arts (ELA) portion of the Georgia Milestones test. 

District-level results tell an even sharper story. Across Georgia’s roughly 180 districts, the share of 3rd graders scoring proficient on the ELA GMAS test ranged from fewer than 10 percent to nearly 70 percent in the same school year, a gap that has far more to do with when a district intervenes than with the students themselves.

The timing problem in Georgia’s reading skills assessment

Like other states, Georgia has long required that reading skills assessments begin in 3rd grade with a standardized test. Since the 2014-15 school year, that test has been the GMAS exam. 

This timing is aligned with federal standards, but it has long presented a sizable challenge for district leaders trying to get to the root of their low literacy scores.

Third grade test-takers are assessed on content that aligns to standards from the English Language Arts Georgia Standards of Excellence (ELAGSE) for 3rd graders. 

Those standards focus on comprehension skills, including reading literary skills, such as describing characters’ motivations, feelings, and actions, and reading informational skills, like using sequence and cause and effect to describe relationships between events or concepts. 

Essentially, this test gives districts and schools an understanding of students’ reading comprehension, their ability to read and explain complex texts at grade level. 

If you’re nodding along here, that’s because it makes sense to assess 3rd graders on skills that we expect students to master by the end of 3rd grade.

Here’s what doesn’t make sense: Nationally, and in Georgia, a large percentage of students enter 3rd grade without having mastered the skills to read text in the first place.

They can’t comprehend text because they can’t even read it.

This is the fundamental problem of the nation’s 3rd grade reading test mandates: The results tell us that kids haven’t mastered 3rd grade skills, but they don’t tell us what’s holding them back.

Forming a foundation for reading in GA

Kids cannot develop reading comprehension if they haven’t first become proficient in foundational reading skills like phonics, skills that appear in the ELAGSE 1st grade standards only.

This isn’t unique to kids in Georgia, of course. The Science of Reading tells us this is how the human brain learns to read, period.

Extensive research tells us that kids need to master a range of foundational reading skills, including phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition, in order to be able to read with fluency. Once they’re fluent readers, students can then apply their cognitive energy to the work necessary to draw meaning from the text. 

Think of it a bit like learning to ride a bike. 

At the start, kids have to learn the basics: how to balance on two wheels, how to pedal with both feet at the same time, and how to use the handlebars to steer the bike. Learning each of these skills requires concentration, and the rider has to focus their mental energy on each motion. 

It takes a lot of practice to master each component skill, and some kids require more practice than others. Once they reach the point where they’re able to balance the bike without training wheels, pedal at a regular rate of speed, and steer their bicycle, these skills become automatic to the point where they no longer have to think about moving their feet up and down and up and down. 

Now their minds are freed up to focus on looking around them, anticipating that dog running up ahead of them that they’ll have to steer the bike around or preparing for the upcoming hill by beginning to pump their legs harder. 

The same is true of learning to read. Some kids need more practice than others for those “component” or foundational skills to become automatic, freeing up the brain for the hard work of comprehension. 

The 1st grade window

Studies show that if a student isn’t reading on grade level, meaning they have not mastered these foundational skills, by the start of 2nd grade, there is a 90 percent chance they’ll still be reading below grade level at the end of 3rd grade and into 4th grade. 

On the other hand, 1st grade skills mastery correlates to future reading achievement. Almost all 1st graders who are on benchmark for phonics will be on benchmark for all reading skills in 3rd grade.

By 3rd grade, Georgia students are expected to have reached this level of fluency, meaning they already know how to apply 1st grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in order to comprehend. If those 3rd graders haven’t yet mastered the foundational skills they need to tackle the content of the Georgia Milestones test, their GMAS scores will only tell you the child isn’t reading at grade level. They won’t reflect the foundational skills gaps because the test is not designed to assess foundational reading skills.

There’s no way to tell if a child who did not score at proficiency levels did so because they have not yet mastered comprehension skills or if it was because they hadn’t mastered the skills to read the questions themselves. Nor can you use the GMSA scores to identify which foundational skills gaps students have in order to address them. 

But with more than 30 percent of 3rd graders not reaching proficient ELA levels on the test, there’s a strong indication that many Georgia students have gaps in their foundational reading skills.

Improving Georgia Milestones scores & student outcomes

Complying with the requirements of the Georgia Early Literacy and Dyslexia Act will make a significant impact on helping 3rd graders who are underperforming on the GMAS exam to close their foundational reading skills gaps and keep 1st graders from falling behind in the first place.

And, there’s even more you can do now to make a difference.

Ensure Supplemental Materials Are Evidence-Based

Your district may have rolled out an updated reading curriculum not that long ago to comply with earlier versions of the Georgia Literacy Act. If that rollout didn’t include a look at the supplemental materials teachers reach for to teach reading, now’s a good time for an audit to ensure they’re meeting the same high bar.

Unfortunately, studies have discovered a wide variety in the quality of materials that a majority of teachers source online to augment core instruction. Many supplemental resources are weak when it comes to clarity and instructional guidance for teachers, and a significant number don’t align to academic standards.

Using these low quality materials counteracts the benefits of adopting a Science of Reading focus for core instruction. In order to bring supplemental materials in line, district and school leaders can do the following:

1. On both the district and school level, emphasize fidelity to the core curriculum in the delivery of instruction by teachers and interventionists. Studies have found this significantly limits teachers’ dependence on supplemental materials.
2. Ensure teachers have the Georgia Department of Education (GADOE) rubric for evaluating supplemental material, and provide additional training to teachers on how to best choose evidence-based materials.
3. If possible, create a repository of supplemental materials that have already been vetted by your district’s curriculum specialists.

Establish a plan for early reading interventions in 1st grade

A strong Tier 1 curriculum, aligned supplemental materials, and teachers trained in evidence-based instruction will go a long way toward improving students’ reading skills and their Georgia Milestones scores.

Still, reading research shows 60 percent of students will need more than core instruction to learn to read. Their brains require code-based, explicit, systematic instruction in order to master foundational reading skills. 

To give these students the level of instruction they need to succeed, schools need an intentional approach to intervention that’s driven by assessment data and rooted in evidence-based practice:  

1. Ensure students who are at risk of not reaching or maintaining their academic grade level, receive evidence-based supports aligned with both Georgia’s Early Intervention Program (EIP) and the Georgia Tiered System of Supports (GaTSS) framework of  evidence-based practices and data-based decision-making. 
2. Consider implementing a quality high-dosage early literacy intervention that provides 1:1 differentiated instruction for at-risk 1st grade readers. This type of on-time intervention gives 1st graders the foundational reading tools they need to finish the school year on benchmark.

Georgia district leaders who’ve made this shift describe it the same way researchers do. Ericka Washington, coordinator of academic intervention services for Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, put it plainly during a recent panel discussion with Ignite Reading:

As Washington describes it, the case for adding this kind of support on top of Tier 1 instruction in 1st grade is rooted in the science of how kids learn how to read.

“It’s about recognizing that some students need greater intensity, greater consistency, and earlier support than our staffing model can provide,” she says.

Helpful Resource

• GADOE has created a toolkit for leaders that provides a guide for implementing literacy interventions that are evidence-based.

Implement a comprehensive plan for assessing literacy skills

By now your district should be administering universal reading screeners three times a year to every K–3rd grader. That’s good news as districts are no longer stuck waiting until 3rd grade to find out a student cannot pass a comprehension test because they still lack basic foundational reading skills.

But screening three times a year is just a good start.

A comprehensive literacy assessment plan should include frequent low stakes assessments that provide more real-time data for those students receiving reading intervention. 

In order to ensure interventions are meeting students’ precise needs, it’s important to also implement ongoing progress monitoring. The exact cadence can vary, depending on a student’s interventional tier, but monitoring should occur at least monthly, and data should be graphed. 

This will enable your teachers to track incremental progress and student knowledge growth over time to guide reteaching and differentiation efforts and reassign students who have met benchmarks. This data will also inform how to regroup kids in order to ensure that they continue to get targeted instruction to fill their gaps and move them along the continuum of learning to read.

Helpful Resource

• Georgia Formative Instructional Practices offers free evidence-based professional learning on how to best use progress monitoring assessment data in the classroom.

The Future of Reading Instruction in Georgia

There’s little question that many of our 3rd graders need help to improve their reading proficiency, but efforts can’t focus solely on 3rd grade. We need to develop a comprehensive approach to early reading instruction that puts our 1st graders on a path to long term success. 

Getting there means prioritizing the early detection of reading skills gaps, providing continuous support for struggling readers, and committing to effective, evidence-based instructional strategies.

With House Bill 1193 mandates already shaping next phase of these reforms, districts that build strong intervention habits now will be ready for whatever comes next, rather than scrambling to catch up once it passes.

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