The primary focus of this study was to evaluate the impact of an intervention reading program on students repeating the 8th grade in a large urban inner city school district. Two years of Reading and Language Art scores (n=537) were analyzed (NCE scores) across various demographic variables (attendance, English language proficiency, and race/ethnicity/gender). A group of students, not participating in any special intervention, matched on pretest means, gender, ethnicity and language proficiency, was chosen for comparison purposes. Overall, the participants made significant gains of over three (3) normal curve equivalents in Reading and almost two (2) normal curve equivalents in Language Arts (SAT-9), while the comparison group scored significantly lower (on the post test).