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 After watching high school graduation rates soar despite poor reading skills documented in tests, Georgia lawmakers have decided to send tens of millions of dollars to elementary schools to boost literacy rates.

The Georgia Early Literacy Act approved by the General Assembly Tuesday would hire more teachers and overhaul curricula and training, with a focus on the phonics-based teaching methods credited with accelerating reading apprehension in other Southern states.

“Our youngest students won today,” said Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, a former school superintendent who leads the House Education Committee and was a main author of House Bill 1193.

The measure passed the Senate unanimously Tuesday with amendments after it passed the House 170-2 in February.

Later Tuesday, the House approved the Senate changes, sending the bill to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.

The main pillar, employing a literacy coach in every K-3 school, remained in the bill after the Senate’s amendments. But the funding method changed.

Instead of using the state’s education funding formula to reimburse school districts for employing 1,313 literacy coaches, the Senate elected to pay for them with a $70 million grant.

Rather than recurring automatically like money in the funding formula, the Legislature would have to appropriate money each year for future grants.

House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said there was no doubt that would happen. Lawmakers may move the funding into the Quality Basic Education funding formula in the future, he said.

“But I can assure you,” he said, “with the support we’ve received, this bill has received, the literacy initiative has received in the Senate and the House, there will be a continued investment in the young people and the children of our state.”

The coaches — teachers with enhanced literacy training — would work in classrooms alongside teachers.

Also, school districts would have to use curricula vetted by the state, and the state would help cover the schools’ costs for acquiring it.

A literacy task force would be empaneled to oversee the process. It would collaborate with the Georgia Department of Education and the state Board of Education to guide the initiative.

Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, said literacy rates in the lower grades had been far lower than high school graduation rates. That could only mean that Georgia schools had been handing diplomas to students who could not read well, said Hickman, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee.

“Now we know the graduation rates were not reflective of the true answer,” said Hickman, who collaborated with Erwin on the bill. “The true answer was our children could not read.”

Hickman, Erwin and other Georgia lawmakers have gradually steered schools toward the teaching of literacy using mainly phonics, part of a broader approach dubbed the “science of reading.”

The best methods for teaching literacy have been subject to debate in academia for decades, but successes with the science approach in other Southern states, including Alabama and Mississippi, led Georgia to follow their lead, first with small steps and, should Kemp sign HB 1193 into law, a big step.