Reading improvement programs that have focused on additional staff for teaching, tutoring, and counseling; prescriptive, self-paced learning methods; unstructured open-education strategies; and intensive reading have often been successful in small towns and middle sized cities, but none has made a major impact on the reading achievement of adolescents in large city schools. Studies have indicated that while these students do not develop effective reading and learning strategies without explicit training, existing reading instructional methods in the content areas do not provide this type of training. After repeated failures, low achieving students and their teachers develop low expectations that further inhibit learning and achievement. These students need effective comprehension instruction and appropriate learning conditions in order to achieve. There is increasing evidence that mastery learning instructional and testing procedures facilitate reading achievement on both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests. There is reason to believe, also, that mastery learning techniques can substantially alter the expectations of students and teachers. A number of mastery learning and learning strategy programs are now in use in large city schools throughout the United States, and other schools are beginning to develop similar materials. (FL)