During Public School (PS) 115's 1969-70 academic year, a first-grade class of 27 disadvantaged, inner city youngsters received a special language arts program entitled Alpha One. Alpha One is a commercial initial reading program designed to teach first grade children to read and write sentences containing words of one, two and three syllables, and to develop and strengthen the child's self-esteem in terms of his language skills achievement. A control class of comparable first graders, instructed by an equally qualified and experienced teacher, used the school's regular reading program--the Stern Structural Reading Program. Both programs were selected to meet the special needs of the PS 115 youngsters, many of whom could not speak fluent English when they enrolled in school. At the end of the academic year, the two groups were compared on the Sentence Reading and Word Recognition subtests of the Gates Primary Reading Test. The Alpha One group scored significantly higher in both areas than the Stern group. At the end of the first grade, the Alpha One group was reading at better than the mid-second-grade level, while the Stern group was at about the norm. (Author/WR)