The importance of helping children become early readers is clear. The cliché is all too true: "Until third grade children learn to read. After third grade they read to learn." Children who do not read at grade level before fourth grade then begin falling behind in all subjects because they cannot fully comprehend their textbooks. These children then begin developing a negative self-image, and by sixth grade they are 10 times as likely to be sent to the principal's office for disciplinary problems.

Following their departure from school, students who read poorly then fill our welfare roles, our prisons and our minimum-wage, dead-end jobs. Just the financial cost to our economy has been estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The cost of illiteracy and low literacy in terms of impact on individuals' lives and on our society as a whole is just too great not to address with every available resource.

The International Education Institute believes children can and should be taught how to read beginning at a much earlier age than expected in American society. Preschools and kindergartens can effectively teach reading in just a few minutes a day with Frontline's fun, music-enhanced method.

With this reading curriculum, President Bush’s No Child Left Behind mandates CAN be achieved.