This technical report covers almost every aspect of the United States component of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) International Reading Literacy Study, from the inception of the project to the production of the reports. The report notes that since much has already been learned from studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress about the reading achievement of fourth and ninth graders, a primary objective in analyzing the data was to go beyond traditional approaches to the analysis and reporting of results. The first part describes all aspects of the process by which data on students, teachers, and schools were collected. The second part describes various aspects of the properties of the reading achievement instruments used, and an initial overview of the reading literacy skills of a few major subgroups. The report culminates in the third part, which describes the methods used to analyze the data and the findings of these analyses. Contains 146 tables and 67 figures of data. Reading literacy tests and student, teacher, and school questionnaires are attached. (RS)