Parents and professional educators agree that reading competence is a necessary prerequisite for successful achievement in nearly all other aspects of the elementary and secondary school curriculum. Successful school achievement is also seen as necessary for later occupational and economic achievement. It is commonly believed that reading failure is strongly related to difficulty in overall school adjustment and to social adjustment in the larger community. While this paper does not deal with all of these broad concerns, it focuses on some of the critical issues in reading achievement and suggests some possible areas in which further investigation might yield results that could be of direct benefit to educators who must plan and implement language programs for black children. It is clear that there is a need for well designed studies which are firmly based on systematic models of language acquisition. There is a need for carefully designed studies of the reading processes within the context of classroom situations where most instruction takes place. The most useful research will be that designed to help teachers utilize the most appropriate strategies in class rooms (or other learning environments) with children who are heterogeneous with regard to experience, motivation, and interest. (Author/JM)