ABSTRACT
The longitudinal study of children’s reading development we began in 1983 was prompted by several concerns. First, despite considerable research on ways to improve children’s reading performance, standardized test scores and other data indicated that, for some students, low reading achievement continued to be a serious problem. Second, although there had been many individual studies of children’s reading, no one had undertaken a study of a large number of children over a period of several years to explain how they learn to read. Last, because of an emphasis on experimental studies, there had been little observational research on reading in more than a decade.
