“Everything is in place to make it happen,” says Mike Brumby, executive director of the Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence.

     Since the 1996-97 school year, Tift students, educators and parents have been participating in the Accelerated Reader (AR) program, which is part of Advantage Learning Systems, a Wisconsin-based, for-profit company that sells reading software to schools.

     To qualify for points under the program, Tift students must read a book and take a computer test on it.  Under a complicate4d scoring system, about one point is earned per book read.  Last year, educators and their supporters decided to see if Tifton could become “The Reading Capital of the World.”

     For Brumby, a former teacher, the AR program is about more than reading.

      “We basically have four goals: to read 1 million books, increase reading test scores by 24%, increase library circulation by 50% and engender a pervasive and palpable sense of being The Reading Capital of the World, “ he says.  Local businesses and residents chipped in $110,000 to support the plan.

     Students who earn points get rewards ranging from a pencil, cap or T-shirt to a trip to an Atlanta Braves baseball game.  So far, Tift Countians have amassed almost 800,000 points – some 800,000 books read – with the popular summer reading program and four months of school still ahead before the year-end deadline.

     Tests to gain points aren’t easy either, at least judging from the exam on Huckleberry Finn taken and passed by this writer.  Despite numerous readings over the years, a few knowledge gaps surfaced during the test.

     For Brumby, reading is a passion.  “Reading is not part of the curriculum, it is the curriculum,” he says.

     Brumby’s own family offers powerful evidence that reading can increase test scores.  His two children, son Harding and daughter Virginia, grew up reading and being tested by their father on a variety of subjects.  Both went on to register perfect scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, becoming only the second brother-sister tandem in Georgia to perform that feat.

     Tifton’s ambitious and unique program is recording other accomplishments as well.  At Charles Spencer Elementary School, youngsters from the city’s poorest families have become school leaders in the AR program.  Previously, many of them were lackluster students indifferent to reading. 

     The 392 students at Spencer have accumulated twice as many points (32,055) as their nearest rivals and have an amazing 100% participation rate in the program.  Charles Spencer media specialists Terri Nalls is credited with taking the AR program and turning it into the schools most impressive learning tool.

     “Reading is the key to all you do,” says Nalls, “A love of reading is the beginning of knowledge.”