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What’s Next for Literacy Education in Georgia? 
 An Interview with Dr. Caitlin Dooley, Deputy Superintendent, 

Georgia Department of Education 
 

Shannon Tovey Howrey 
 

Kennesaw State University 
 
Tovey: Caitlin, thank you so much for 
agreeing to do this interview for the 
Georgia Journal of Literacy. Our editorial 
board has participated in brainstorming 
questions and topics that we believe will 
help our journal to become more relevant 
and focused in the scholarly work that 
may inform literacy education policy and 
practice in Georgia. 
 
Dooley: Hi Shannon. Thanks so much for 
asking for input. We have such a strong 
state, and our students are showing 
tremendous strength academically. And at 
the same time, so much is changing in 
education as we adapt to a digital society, 
address the state’s high poverty level, and 
we learn more from research about learning. 
The scholars in our state can help us all 
better serve Georgia’s children. 

Tovey: First, what do you see as top areas 
of scholarly research right now in 
Georgia? For example, what specific 
research is needed regarding high school 
striving readers and what specific 
research might be needed regarding 
multilingual learners regarding English 
reading and literacy skills? 

Dooley: Some of the questions I get most 
often from educators around the state 
involve the following: 

1. I have middle/high school 
students who are still struggling 
to read. I can get them the skills 
through remediation programs, 
but these programs are not very 
interesting and have problems of 
their own. The remediation 
programs sometimes even make 
the students not want to read 
once they learn how.  I need help 
getting older students interested 
and excited about reading and 
writing without giving them 
materials and activities for 
younger kids. What can I use? 

2.  Our school population just 
changed, seemingly overnight (or 
over a summer). We now have 
more English learners, low-
income families, etc. than we 
have ever had before. What do 
we do to make sure our teachers 
provide high-quality instruction? 

3. My school is very rural—we 
have one stoplight and a Piggly 
Wiggly and lots of fields. What 
can I do if my students are 
coming from families that are 
suffering from poverty? I know 
it’s affecting the students’ 
learning. Where do I even begin? 

4. The elementary school that my 
child goes to is a new 
“Community School.” What does 

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Georgia Journal of Literacy  Volume 43, Spring 2020 
 
 

that mean? Will it help with 
literacy? 

5. We know that over 60% of 
students in Georgia’s public 
schools are growing up in 
impoverished communities. 
What does this mean for literacy 
learning? How can we ensure 
high quality instruction AND all 
of the other supports for learning 
are in place? 

6. Dyslexia. Can I “diagnose” it? 
What’s the role of the general 
classroom teacher in ensuring 
that students get the services they 
need? Who else needs to be 
involved (think SST)? 

7. How should writing be taught in 
Kindergarten and first grade? 

I get these questions regularly. These are 
excellent opportunities for “research-
practitioner partnerships”. Some questions 
can be answered with extant literature. 
Others would require a deeper look at local 
context and implementation.  

Tovey: You have stated concerns that 
rural areas carry challenges for literacy 
that go beyond the school system, 
including women and infant health issues 
and other challenges that affect brain 
development. How might we, as research 
professionals and literacy advocates, 
address these challenges in our research 
or through other efforts? 
 
Dooley: According to Kids Count, Georgia 
suffers from one of the highest poverty rate 
among children. We see this in our public 
schools where over 60% are “economically 
disadvantaged” (Ga Dept. of Ed., 2019). 
This is not to suggest that poverty dictates 
education outomes; in fact, Georgia was 
recently ranked 13th in the nation for K12 
academic achievement by Ed Week’s 

Quality Counts.  This is evidence that 
children, their families, and their educators 
are striving to overcome the effects of 
poverty in spite of regressive policies and 
practices that limit children and families’ 
access to health care, housing, food, internet 
service, libraries, and texts.  
 
Tovey: What can research and literacy 
professionals do?  
 

1. Too often, issues related to poverty 
are constructed as “partisan issues”; 
but they aren’t. There are advocates 
for children in all political parties. 
Enter the conversation respectful of 
differences and try to find where 
convergences exist. Respect is key. 
Listen. Voices for Children is non-
partisan and has some helpful 
resources.  

2. Make the evidence clear and share 
the data. These data are available on 
GeorgiaInsights.com. 

3. Consider statistical models that can 
shed light on the systems relating 
literacy to the effects of poverty such 
as structural pathway analyses, 
structural equations, HLM, and other 
research methods. We need to map 
the logic between seemingly 
disparate entities. This not only helps 
shed light on the connections, but we 
may also discover new ways to 
innovatively move in on the effects 
of poverty in ways that benefit 
literacy learning.  

4. Tell the success stories. We have 
many Georgia citizens who have 
grown up in poverty and have “made 
it” with literacy learning. Tell their 
stories. Pay attention to the change-
makers in their lives who made 
learning possible. Those stories will 
inspire others. 

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Georgia Journal of Literacy  Volume 43, Spring 2020 
 
 

5. Study systems. No one learns in a 
vacuum. Literacy is especially a 
social act. Therefore, study how 
literacy takes shape in the context of 
a family, a school, or a community. 
These systems studies help us 
understand how to navigate 
complexities. 

6. Stop fighting with other literacy 
researchers. The literacy wars need 
to end—there’s no teacher worth his 
or her salt who thinks “oh, we should 
never teach phonics” or “oh, I would 
never focus on language 
development.” Arguments about the 
“Science of Reading” seems to 
polarize our literacy community; I 
prefer the term “evidence-based” 
because it requires us not only to 
look at extant research but also to 
investigate the efficacy of our 
practices. The Every Student 
Succeeds Act uses the language of 
“evidence” to drive these two 
objectives as well. Accept that we 
have many studies and lots of 
research and we need to move 
forward. Take the next step to make 
a difference by teaching someone to 
read and write and/or studying how 
others learn to read and write in local 
communities.  

Tovey: How do you envision the dyslexia 
legislation recently passed affecting 
Georgia teacher preparation and the 
overall teaching of literacy in elementary, 
middle, and high schools throughout the 
state? What kinds of research might be 
needed? 

Dooley: We need to do a better job as 
literacy professionals in understanding what 
makes someone have difficulty learning to 
read. According to the US Department of 
Education’s National Center for Education 

Statistics,  about 80% of American 
adults (ages 16-65) can read and write 
sufficiently enough to complete tasks, 
paraphrase, compare and contrast, and make 
low-level inferences. While not sufficiently 
admirable for a nation as rich and promising 
as the U.S. is, this literacy rate far outpaces 
many countries. Yet, we are faced with a 
large segment of students in the US, about 
20%, who never master literacy even at this 
basic level. That’s a lot of people! The 
National Institutes of Health estimates that 
10% of the total population suffers from 
dyslexia.  I think that we are starting to take 
this statistic seriously in Georgia. We would 
never be satisfied with an 80% “land” rate 
by Delta airlines; why should we be satisfied 
with an 80% reading rate?  
 
In teacher education programs, we need to 
shore up understandings about reading 
difficulties, including dyslexia. We have 
experts right here in Georgia’s university 
system who can help. I suggest researchers 
study how we change our own work in light 
of these stats. What can we do better to 
prepare educators to serve all literacy 
learners. 

Tovey: Is there anything else you would 
you like to add?  

Dooley: Georgia’s state plan for the Every 
Student Succeeds Act is centered around the 
Whole Child. That policy statement helps us 
situate all that we do so that it benefits a 
child—we literally ask ourselves: how will 
this effect a child? Developing that focus—
that “why”—is essential to Georgia’s 
continued improvement. In my own 
education at the University of Virginia, I 
learned to think about children’s physical, 
cognitive, social, emotional, and academic 
growth as inter-related. As I study the state-
wide system, keeping the child at the 
center—knowing that any child is learning 

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Georgia Journal of Literacy  Volume 43, Spring 2020 
 
 

within this dynamic developmental 
trajectory—helps me situate literacy policies 
and practices. 

Tovey: Thank you so much for your time, 
Caitlin. You’ve given us information that 

will help to strengthen the partnership 
between GALA/the GJL and the Georgia 
Department of Education as we work 
toward the common goal of world-class 
literacy education in the state of Georgia. 

 
About Dr. Dooley:  
 
Caitlin McMunn Dooley, Ph.D., is Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning at the 
Georgia Department of Education and a Professor of Education at Georgia State University. Her 
research investigates digital literacies, emergent comprehension, literacy instruction and testing 
in elementary grades, and teacher development. With over 50 publications, her research has been 
published in national and international refereed journals and chapters published by the Literacy 
Research Association, the International Reading Association, and the National Council of 
Teachers of English, among others. Dooley has led and evaluated funded research totaling more 
than $250 million from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Education, US 
Department of Health and Human Services the US Corporation for National and Community 
Service, and various foundations. She served as co-Editor for the National Council of Teachers 
of English premier journal Language Arts (2011-2016). A former Fulbright Scholar, Dooley’s 
awards include “2020 Jimmy Stokes Service Award” from the Georgia Association of Education 
Leaders; “2012 Spirit of Partnership Award” from the Professional Development School 
Network; “2008 Jerry Johns Promising Researcher Award” from the Association of Literacy 
Educators and Researchers; “2006 Outstanding Dissertation—Distinguished Finalist,” from the 
International Reading Association, “2005 Outstanding Dissertation” from the Georgia 
Association of Teacher Educators, “1998 Eisenhower Teacher Leader” from the School 
University Research Network and William and Mary College. In addition to having taught 
preschool and elementary grades, Dooley has served as a consultant to the Texas Educational 
Agency Student Assessment Division, the national non-profit Children’s Literacy Initiative, as 
well as several urban schools and districts. Dooley received her doctorate from the University of 
Texas at Austin and her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia. 
 

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