After a brief historical review of the development of basic reading materials and controlled vocabularies, a study to determine the percentage of Dolch words in four recently published basal reader programs is reported. The percentages provided help in determining whether the Dolch list is still viable. Results revealed that words on the Dolch list accounted for more than 50% of the words in every book assessed. It was concluded that recently published basic readers include approximately the same percentage of Dolch words as basic readers in use four decades ago. (Author)