A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the instructional effectiveness of the SIGNATURES program (Harcourt Brace), an elementary reading program that aimed to reflect the best thinking about reading instruction. In developing the program, the publishers reviewed current curriculum guides and content standards for most states and from professional groups such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. Also, they met in small focus groups with hundreds of teachers and consulted with several nationally recognized reading educators regarding content and instructional practices. A total of 18 teachers from Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio participated in the study: 9 at grade 1, and 9 at grade 4. The teachers had not used the program previously. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used. At grade 1 the mean Skills Test score increased from 78.5% before instruction to 86.1% after instruction; at grade 4, the mean Skills Test score increased from 72.5% to 83.1%. Both groups showed a significant gain in the Stanford 9 Total Reading score, and additional analysis was conducted to see which subtests may have contributed to those gains. Findings suggest that SIGNATURES is instructionally effective, and this appears to hold up across grade levels. Contains 4 tables of data. (NKA)