Children are faced with an increased potential for academic failure due to less stable family lives and career-oriented parents. Cross-cultural reading instruction practices and programs can provide insights that could prevent such failure for children at-risk. One such program is the reading maintenance program used in Denmark, wherein groups of five selected children meet with a reading teacher for 2 hours of daily instruction for 10 weeks. Reading teachers attempt to adhere to the classroom curriculum, and focus on reading aloud, copying passages, and discussing miscues or errors. A similar program is Reading Recovery, used in New Zealand, wherein at-risk first grade students meet with an instructor for 30 minutes a day for 15-20 weeks. Instruction focuses on teacher modeling of fluent reading, and student reading of short easy books to develop their own fluency. A third program, Paired Reading, used in the United Kingdom, involves parents and children reading together. Children read to themselves until they reach a difficult passage, then parent and child read together, the adult modeling difficult words until the child can read them alone. The reading programs mentioned are only three of many aimed at prevention. They require extra funding, but will save money in remedial programs in the long run, while addressing students' real needs. (Highlights of the three programs are attached, and references are included.) (JC)