In order to foster skills which would facilitate disadvantaged children's ability to learn to read, Buchanan and Sullivan developed the Readiness for Language Arts program published by the Behavioral Research Laboratories (BRL). A pilot study was run (1) to test the effectiveness of the BRL programmed materials on Head Start children and (2) to see if posttest differences between subject and control groups would be due to the program or teacher differences. Seven Head Start classes were randomly designated as experimental groups and 4 as control groups. All subjects were pretested on the Peabody, the UCLA Language Concepts Test, and the Lee-Clark Reading Readiness Test. Also, the experimental classes were given the UCLA Visual Discrimination Inventory. The 7 teachers and 7 teacher aides from the experimental classes were trained in use of the BRL program before they administered it to their students. The program is highly structured and took 4 months to carry out. The children were posttested on the UCLA Language Concepts Test and the Lee-Clark Reading Readiness Test, but no significant between-group difference was found. Teacher behaviors appeared to be related to program effectiveness. (MH)