National Reading Panel

2000

In 1997, Congress asked the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to work with the U.S. Department of Education to create a National Reading Panel made up of 14 individual from varying positions, such as school administrators, teachers, and scientists, to research evidence of the best ways that children learn to read. The national Reading Panel considered 100,000 reports that had been published since 1966 and then another 10,000 published before that time. In order to accomplish the task in the amount of time given, the National Reading Panel limited the type of reports they were to examine and reduced the number to several hundred. From their research, they were able to identify the following techniques as the most important in teaching children how to read: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, guided oral reading, teaching vocabulary words, and reading comprehension strategies. In 2001, the results from the National Reading Panel were emphasized in the No Child Left Behind Act to help improve education.