Reading is no doubt critical to success in our society. Even more critical to success in our society is literacy, which at the most basic level encompasses writing, speaking, listening and understanding words in addition to merely reading words. Within various levels of developmental ability, a literate person can derive and convey meaning, and use their knowledge to achieve a desired purpose or goal that requires the use of language skills, be they spoken or written. A literate person can mediate their world by deliberately and flexibly orchestrating meaning from one linguistic knowledge base and apply or connect it to another knowledge base. For example, knowing that letters symbolize sounds, and that those sounds form words to which the reader can attach meaning, is an example of the cognitive orchestration of knowledge, a literate person conducts.

Literacy is "not in isolated bits of knowledge but in students' growing ability to use language and literacy in more and broader activities" (Moll, 1994, p. 202).The definition of literacy is dynamic, evolving, and reflects the continual changes in our society. Literacy has, for instance, expanded to include literacy in information and communication technologies and critical literacy (Cunningham, 2000; Harste, 1994; Leu, 2002; Mol1, 1994; Paris, Lipson & Wixson, 1994; Yopp & Singer, 1994). In our modern society, citizens are required to do more with text than ever before. Employers are calling for more skilled workers and literacy demands have increased and changed as technological capabilities of our society have expanded and been made widely available. Literacy is a priority in the state of Georgia. Collaboration has been established with other agencies and teams within the Department to ensure that all of our students’ needs are being met through a tiered learning process. Similarly, our world-class standards based curriculum offers a “reading across the curriculum” strand to support and meet the needs of content-area teachers. Through state and federally funded grants and programs (K-12), the Georgia Department of Education Reading Unit provides the resources necessary to improve the overall literacy skills of Georgia’s children.