Reading Programs Reading Comprehension ...any Silver Bullets?: a Comparison of Two Reading Programs on Third Grade Reading Achievement

Children who struggle in vain with reading in the first grade soon decide that they neither like nor want to read (Juel, 1988). Early childhood educators realize the critical importance of making sure that as many children as possible learn to read in the primary grades. Achieving this goal is important because the more children who become proficient readers at any early age, the fewer children would be retained or require special education services/remediation, perhaps resulting in cost savings to school districts across the country. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act legislation (formerly known as NCLB) requires both higher standards and higher success rates at the same time. Failure of students to learn to read adequately as shown by national and state results and the need for continued school success had prompted education officials in a large suburban school system in the Southeast United States to implement two reading programs - Voyager Universal Literacy and Harcourt Trophies. This book provides the results of a study to determine if any significant differences existed between reading comprehension performances of third-grade students using Voyager and Trophies.