These days everyone seems to be focused on reading "programs," but the evidence that they produce better results than well-informed teachers designing instruction based on the needs of the kids in their own classes is scant. From Education Week, via Reading Rockets:
In other words, the conclusion is that none of the four programs studied—Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge—is effective.
The large-scale randomized control study
involved 6,350 students, who were all in the 5th grade, and 268
teachers in 10 urban districts with large numbers of disadvantaged
students. The 89 schools in the study were randomly assigned to either
a group of schools using one of the reading curricula being studied or
to a control group.
The researchers for the study—conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., of Princeton, N.J., for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences—used a general reading test called the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation, or GRADE, and reading-comprehension tests of science and social studies to measure student achievement. In addition, they factored in students’ composite scores for all tests.
They concluded that Project CRISS, developed by Creating Independence Through Student-Owned Strategies; Read About, produced by Scholastic Inc.; and Read for Real, created by Chapman University and Zaner-Bloser, had no effect on reading comprehension. In addition, they found that Reading for Knowledge, created by the Success for All Foundation, had a negative impact on the composite test scores and the science-comprehension test scores for students using that curriculum.
More here.
Comic book legend Stan Lee discusses comic books and young readers in the most recent edition of 
Edutopia (which is rapidly becoming one of the better general interest publications about education):
Since the earliest days, comics have been on the very bottom of our cultural totem pole. So many parents and teachers have believed erroneously that if a youngster reads illustrated stories, he or she won't be able to cope with books that consist only of words.
Those people claim that comics stifle the reader's imagination because the reader can actually see the characters and the scenes instead of having to imagine them. I've always contended that that is a total fallacy. If that were true, then no one should attend one of Shakespeare's plays, because that would stifle the audience's imagination; the plays should only be read. It is obvious how nonsensical that theory is.
During the years I was at Marvel Comics, I received hundreds and hundreds of letters from parents and teachers. They all said basically the same thing: "I despaired of ever making a reader out of little Johnny. I just couldn't get him to open a book. He was getting failing grades in English, in grammar and composition, and then, one day, he began to read comic books, and he really got hooked on them. In a short time, he became an avid comic book reader. Now, it is hard for me to understand, but his grades in English and composition have improved tremendously. He's even started reading other things."
Read the rest here.
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