This study compared the efficacy of two decoding skill-based programs, one based on explicit orthographic rime and one on grapheme--phoneme correspondences, to a control group exposed to an implicit phonics program. Children in both explicit decoding programs performed consistently better than the control group in the accuracy with which they read and spelled words covered in the program. Only children in the grapheme--phoneme correspondence program consistently spelled transfer words better than children in the control group. In addition, children in the grapheme-phoneme correspondence group consistently read words more quickly than children in the control group. Children in both explicit decoding programs scored higher than the children in the control group on measures of reading comprehension and oral reading at posttest.