This focused newsletter features articles about reading, reading research, and teaching reading. The newsletter's lead article, "The Challenge of Improving Reading," enumerates the problems that schools and families can encounter when trying to raise student performance in reading. Another article in the newsletter, "The Longest War: How Best to Teach Reading," cites teaching the beginning reader to acquire phonemic awareness as the key first step in developing reading abilities. A third article reports that National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores show some improvement as to reading assessment and gives results for the nation (in grades 4, 8, and 12), for states (in grades 4 and 8), and reading results by student subgroup. Other brief articles discuss brain-based research about how humans learn to read and a 2-phase study (undertaken with the University of Vermont) centered on the Secretary of Education's reading priority. Information about tutoring reading and current initiatives in reading and literacy is also included. Contains a list of reading resources and references. (NKA)