A study was conducted to investigate the curricular experiences of the low achievers, including the quality of the programs they participated in and the congruence between their classroom and pullout programs. Three lower-middle-class first graders in the Pacific Northwest participated in the study: John spent the entire day in the classroom; Ginny was pulled out of the classroom 15 minutes daily to receive remedial help in reading comprehension in the Chapter 1 program; and Michael was pulled out of the classroom 25 minutes daily to receive help in reading comprehension and word attack from the special education teacher in a resource room setting. The reading programs implemented for each of the students were investigated primarily through classroom observation, informal conversations with teachers, summaries of journal entries, and children's written work. Portions of the core classroom program were judged to be of poor quality in both student responses and teacher-student interactions. It is likely that this negatively affected the achievement of the at-risk students. The experiences of Ginny and Michael in their respective pullout settings appear to be qualitatively different from their classroom experiences. Text difficulty was controlled by orthographic features rather than by meaning; instruction was teacher-directed rather than learner-controlled; materials were teacher-selected rather than student-selected; expected student responses differed; and student-teacher interactions were sustained longer. (Nineteen references are attached.) (MG)