A follow-up study examined the long-term effects associated with receiving formal reading instruction in kindergarten. Subjects, 3,959 high school seniors from 24 school districts in 10 states, were part of the Beginning Reading Program (BRP) during the 1973-74 school year. The BRP originally included over 200 elementary schools and over 5,000 kindergarten classrooms. Subjects were introduced to and taught reading skills using systematically developed materials and instructional procedures. Subjects in the follow-up study completed a norm-referenced reading test, a specially designed reading vocabulary test, and "The Reading Biographer" (which assessed a host of other educational indicators and related factors). Results indicated that students who learned to read in kindergarten (about half of those in the program) were superior in reading skills and on educational indicators than students not in the BRP. The results were consistent across school districts, racial/ethnic groups, gender, and socioeconomic groups. (One table of data is included.) (RS)