The achievement of four groups of children as measured by the Stanford Achievement Test was compared at the end of the first, second, and third year of school. The four programs used were the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), Words in Color (WIC), Phonetic Keys, and teacher-designed analytic programs. At the end of the first year there appeared to be a rather clear advantage in favor of i.t.a., a trend which continued to the end of the second year but not the third. Third-year results indicated some definite advantages of WIC for boys. There appeared to be definite disadvantages for boys who participated in the Phonetic Keys program. For the girls, none of the four programs was markedly superior. In a replication and extension study done at the first-year level in 1968-69, Lippincott Basic Reading and Sullivan Programmed method groups were added, and Phonetic Keys was no longer included. The replication found that i.t.a. and Lippincott ranked highest, WIC ranked second, while the remaining methods tended to rank low. A questionnaire of student attitudes found that the children responded with positive feelings about reading, school, and their competency 72 percent of the time. Other questionnaire findings and tables reporting test results are included. (Author/DH)