The National Reading Panel Report

A t the behest of the United States Congress in 1997, the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the U.S. Secretary of Education selected 14 persons to serve as a National Reading Panel (NRP). Most Panel members were reading researchers in various fields. All but two members held a doctorate. The Panel was charged to review and assess the research on teaching reading, with implications for both classroom practice and further research. The report of the National Reading Panel was issued in two volumes. The first volume (00-4769) is a succinct summary of how the Panel came to be, the topics it chose to investigate, its procedures and methods, and its findings. The second volume (00-4754) contains the same introductory and methodological information, but presents at great length the work of each of the topical subgroups within the Panel. It is the second volume that one must read to fully understand the findings and recommendations for classroom practice and future research. In this review, I refer to both volumes collectively as the NRP Report. Citations of the first volume contain only page numbers (e.g., p. 4); citations of the second volume contain a section number followed by page numbers because the second volume’s pagination starts with 1 in each section (e.g., p. 3-13 means section 3, page 13 of the second volume). Some statements appear verbatim in both volumes.