Funded in 1971 under Title III, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the teacher exchange program to improve reading instruction was designed as a 3 year project. The thrust of the program ranged from creating awareness of and interest in good teaching practices to helping instructors implement these practices in their own classrooms. Building on another ESEA Title III program, planners designed the Upper Cumberland Reading Project to: (1) address the needs of 13 Appalachian countries in Tennessee; (2) demonstrate teaching methods which could be used with basal programs and in self-contained classrooms; (3) require no expenditures for materials or equipment; (4) demonstrate approaches for teaching reading which could be used after the project ended. The actual exchange program had 3 stages: (1) itinerant teachers from the 2 exchange centers spend 1 day visiting participating teachers; (2) during the next 5 days, participating teachers visited the 2 demonstration schools; and (3) on the last 2 days of an exchange, participants returned to their own schools and worked with the ESEA Title III itinerant teachers to implement instructional practices observed at the centers. The 5 findings, measured by the Stanford Achievement Test, indicated that the ESEA Title III pupils made significantly greater gains in reading than did control pupils. (KM)