You can hear Dwight's devotion to his students -- the awesome sense of responsibility he, and all teachers, feel everyday standing in front of children.

You can also see his frustration.

Eight years ago, as a new elementary teacher, it didn't take him long to figure out that his students had trouble reading. But he had no idea how to figure out what they could do. So, he set about teaching himself while he was teaching his students.

Stephanie taught reading for four years and at first struggled getting students to understand what they read. She also threw herself into learning on the job, concluding that, "You just don't walk into a classroom and say 'OK, I'm going to teach my students reading today.' It's much more complex and complicated than I ever knew before I actually started doing it."

Two teachers in two different cities -- very similar early struggles in teaching reading. Anecdotal evidence? Maybe not...

That is, our Teacher Prep Review found that 70 percent of the programs we evaluated for reading do not adequately cover the BIG FIVE components outlined in the 2000 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Report of the National Reading Panel.

Our reading standard book will tell you more about our reading standard, how we evaluated it, and the expert reviewers who did the work. See a few exemplary courses we identified through our work.

Bonus (if you've read this far): pages 33-35 of Moats' Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science, referenced above and published in 1999, contains an appendix of the Knowledge and Skills for Teaching Reading: A Core Curriculum for Teacher Candidates.