The Panel reviewed the effectiveness of teacher preparation in reading instruction. Although the Panel determined that more study is necessary to show which components of teacher education are most effective, it nevertheless concluded that inservice professional development improved teaching as well as student performance. These findings suggest that administrators should regularly make professional development opportunities available to their teaching staff. To ensure that the report's findings are successfully disseminated, the Panel also relies on administrators to pass on their knowledge and be effective advocates for research-based information. The Panel's research suggests that reading instruction is complex.
Children come into the classroom with different levels of preparation, as do their teachers.
In addition, learning to read requires a combination of skills, including phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, and text reading comprehension skills. Not all children learn in the same way and one strategy does not work for all children. As a result, the Panel's findings demonstrate that learning phonics skills is critical for positive reading development. However, the best results will be achieved when direct instruction is combined with the development of other skills, and when teachers are able to use a combination of direct instructional strategies to achieve those skills. Although the work of producing the panel report is complete, the findings continue to be distributed.