A recent national study of state and local No Child Left Behind activities indicated that 80 percent of elementary teachers reported participating in 24 hours or less of professional development on reading instruction during the 2003-2004 school year and summer. Reading and professional development experts are concerned that this is not intensive enough to be effective and that it does not focus enough on subject-matter knowledge. To help states and districts make informed decisions about professional development to improve reading instruction, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned the study of early reading professional development to examine the impact of two research-based interventions for reading instruction. One was an eight-day institute and seminar series that began in the summer of 2005 and continued through much of the 2005-06 school year. The second was the same institute series plus in-school coaching. The study was implemented in 90 schools in six districts (270 teachers and about 5,500 students), with equal numbers of schools randomly assigned in each district to the institute group, the institute-plus-coaching group, or the control group, which received the usual professional development offered by the district. Although research-based professional development for early reading teachers increased their knowledge of reading content and recommended instructional practices and their use of one of those practices (explicit instruction), findings did not indicate improved student reading achievement. (Contains 3 figures.) [For the full report, "The Impact of Two Professional Development Interventions on Early Reading Instruction and Achievement. NCEE 2008-4030," see ED502700.]