This article evaluates the "Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the Subgroups" (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). The author also examines the following phonics instruction research syntheses: (1) Stephen Krashen's "More Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Fluency" (PDK, 2001); (2) Gregory Camilli, Sakako Vargas, and Michele Yurecko's "Teaching Children to Read: The Fragile Link between Science and Federal Reading Policy" (Education Policy Analysis Archives, 2003); (3) Gregory Camilli and Paula Wolfe's "Research on Reading: A Cautionary Tale" (Educational Leadership, 2004); and (4) Timothy Shanahan's "Critiques of the National Reading Panel Report: Their Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice" (The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research, 2004). Through this review of literature, the author concludes that the research all seemed to find: (1) the advantage of instructional approaches that include systematic phonics over instructional approaches that include some or no phonics is statistically significant; (2) however, instructional approaches that include systemic phonics instruction show their greatest advantage in the early primary grades; and (3) instruction in systematic phonics should be integrated with other types of reading instruction to create a balanced reading program, for phonics instruction is never a complete reading program. This article provides the details of the author's review of research syntheses on phonics instruction and his interpretation of the literature. (Contains 16 endnotes.)