A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of six approaches to beginning reading instruction (basal, linguistic, phonic, programed reading, i/t/a, and unifon) in schools serving educationally disadvantaged children and to determine the effectiveness of lay aides in project classrooms. Subjects were approximately 4,000 pupils in primary one and two classes of 19 inner city Detroit public schools. The means and standard deviations of achievement and aptitude test scores were computed for each experimental treatment group. Teacher evaluations of lay aides' services were analyzed by response frequency distributions. Test results indicated that, with few exceptions, the reading achievement means for all treatment groups were below grade level in terms of national norms. With primary two pupils, i/t/a followed by the basal approach to reading instruction produced the highest mean achievement scores. Teachers' responses indicated that lay aides provided valuable classroom assistance. No conclusions regarding the relative effectiveness of the various methods of reading instruction can be drawn until June 1968 achievement test scores are available. Brief descriptions of the six teaching methods used in the experiment are included in an appendix. (BS)