This publication tells the stories of eight schools from around the nation that have used the Open Court Reading program, describing the history of the schools, the challenges they faced, and their attempts to meet those challenges. The schools are located in California, Florida, Texas, and New York. Each of the school stories includes a focus on demonstrable positive results on reading achievement. The schools serve children with a range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and geographic characteristics. They share many characteristics, perhaps the most important of which is a set of results. As a group, they show a reversal of the trends of failure, documenting improvements in reading performance and levels of achievement that often dramatically exceed that of their peers in similar schools. All of the schools and their effective reading programs have implemented ongoing programs of professional development for their teachers, used assessments of student progress during the school year to ensure effective instruction, demonstrated the importance of the principal as the instructional leader, and created exciting climates within their schools to encourage learning. A selected annotated bibliography presents research supporting instruction in Open Court Reading. (SM)