In the early 1980s, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) revised its policies on reading instruction. A new transactional definition of reading shifted the emphasis from discrete reading skills to comprehension and set out objectives consistent with that new definition. Policymakers also revised the state?s reading-evaluation instruments, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP), to reflect the new emphasis on comprehension (Spillane 1998). In the early 1990s, responding to the national standards movement, the department developed the Michigan Curriculum Framework (MCF) as a guide for districts and teachers developing local curriculum. The MCF consisted of six sections: (1) an introduction; (2) content standards and draft benchmarks for the core-content areas; (3) planning; (4) teaching; (5) learning; assessment; and (6) professional development. According to the MCF, the benchmarks indicate "student expectations at various developmental levels including elementary, middle school, and high school" Although the teachers had hoped to see greater improvement in the MEAP scores, they were pleased with the day-to-day progress of their students, especially those at risk. The teachers looked at their students and saw readers and writers where they had once seen students who showed little interest in literacy. The students had progressed from hating to read to loving to read. Working with curriculum-based standards had helped the teachers write a curriculum that has transformed a culture of nonreaders into a community of readers.