in the "look and say" readers that most of us grew up with. The 1986 National Advisory Council on Adult Education report, "Illiteracy in America" cites several examples of how the cost of reading instruction can be reduced, while at the same time improving reading scores: "In her book, "Programmed Illiteracy in Our Schools," [Mary Johnson] says that: `The workbooks to a sight method [`look and say'] basal series soon become superfluous whenever phonics is taught by a direct method. . . .the annual expenditure on workbooks was more than four times greater than that on hardcover readers [used in a phonics-first program]. (The workbooks have to be replaced each year because the children write in them.)'" The Superintendent of Schools in Seekonk, Massachusetts hired a private-sector organization to train his primary-grade teachers in intensive systematic phonics. The cost of reading materials to implement the new program was eighty-eight percent less per pupil than the "look and say" or "whole language" reading program previously used in the district. "Mr. H. Marc Mason, Principal of Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Mesa, Arizona, said that in 1978 his school spent $23.42 per student on reading materials. In the same year, his teachers were trained [to teach phonics]. By 1981, expenditures for reading materials had dropped to $8.50 per student, [while at the same time] achievement scores . . . surpassed the national, state, and district norms in language as well as in math." In his book, "Preventing Reading Failure: An Examination of