This study examined the effectiveness of Early Steps, a lst-grade reading intervention program. Forty-three at-risk 1st graders, identified in September, received an average of 91 1-to-l tutoring lessons during the school year. The work of the tutors was carefully guided by a trainer who made 9 site visits. At the end of the school year, the Early Steps group outperformed a comparison group on a variety of reading measures, including oral reading accuracy, comprehension, and pseudoword decoding. Moreover, Early Steps tutoring made the largest difference for those children who were most at risk (lowest in reading ability) in September. In discussing the intervention model, emphasis is given to its systematic word study component and to the critical role of the trainer of tutors. Reading, along with writing and math, is a "tool skill" that must be learned early and well in a child's education. This is because reading ability provides access to much of what is important in the school curriculum, including literature, science, social studies, and math. In our society, 6-year-olds enter first grade expecting to learn to read. Their parents expect them to learn to read, and so do their teachers. Regrettably, these expectations are not always met. Many children struggle with learning to read in first grade and, once they fall behind, have a difficult time closing the reading achievement gap in later grades (Juel, 1988; Stanovich, 1986). For this reason, the prevention of early reading failure has been a major issue in the field of education for over a decade. Thus far, the most ambitious and carefully studied early reading intervention program in the United States has been Reading Recovery. Developed by New Zealander Marie Clay (1979, 1993), Reading Recovery identifies at-risk readers early in first grade and provides them with daily one-to-one tutoring by a carefully trained teacher. The goal is to help the children catch up with the "middle of the class" in reading by the end of the first-grade year. Field tests have documented Reading Recovery's effectiveness (Deford,