a theoretical perspective. Next, we describe the current state of knowledge about congruence between the two curricula. Finally, we present a study that describes reading instruction congruence and provides some hypotheses about the causes and effects of such congruence. There are currently many different philosophies concerning reading instruction. Because different basal reading materials are developed from diverse instructional ideologies, they often vary in the rate of introduction of new words, the nature of the words introduced (determined by frequency of use, grapho-phonic regularity, or presumed interest), the emphasis on silent or oral reading, relationship of pictures to text (in terms of information value), relationship of text structure to natural language patterns, predictability of text, and order of introduction of skills. The instruction early readers receive (e.g., decoding based vs. meaning based) is reflected in their reading performance, particularly for less able readers. The reading errors of children whose early instruction emphasized decoding tend to match the letter-sound relationships of the actual words but are semantically inappropriate-sometimes even nonsense words. Children taught with a meaning-based approach tend to produce errors that are semantically appropriate but bear little relationship to the printed words (e.g., Barr The Elementary School Journal Volume 85, Number 4 ? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/85/8504-0001$01.00