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Get the truth about ARC Core 2017, published by American Reading Company and given all green on EdReports. This site exists to share the materials as they were reviewed and point out that its foundational levels were clearly built around three-cueing and "reading pictures."
Many of these materials and instructional practices remain in use in classrooms nationwide. We aim to counter the intentional scrubbing and obscuring of these methods, ensuring educators and families are fully informed about the curriculum's design and implications.
Featured on Sold a Story.
Featured on Sold a Story.
This video features a girl reading from an ARC Yellow book. It highlights the cueing techniques that are used throughout ARC's materials.
APM Reports released an episode and report in March 2025 that details how EdReports ratings, which were previously not based on the science of reading, likely contributed to schools choosing ARC as a curriculum.
Per the Reading League's Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines, ARC Core has red flags for all three non-negotiables in Word Recognition:
What is three cueing?
What is three cueing?
Per the Reading League, three cueing is defined as:
Directing students to use:
picture cues
context cues
attend to the first letter of a word as a cue
How are the K-1 levels of ARC Core tied to cueing?
How are the K-1 levels of ARC Core tied to cueing?
The first three levels (which start in Kindergarten and go to 1st Grade) are:
Yellow
Green
Blue
Yellow and Green materials include many words that early readers will not know how to sound out. ARC employed explicit and implicit guidance to use "picture clues" to "read" these words, in addition to other cueing strategies.
More information on ARC Reading Levels.
Where can I view current ARC books?
Where can I view current ARC books?
All ARC Core books can be viewed online at:
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