AbstractSince the 1900's many prominent educators have advocated that all teachers help students comprehend texts they assign in their classes, but no national studies have been carried out to survey how widely U.S. schools have implemented content reading programs. The purposes of this study were (a) to determine how widely U.S. secondary schools have implemented programs which involve all content teachers in presenting techniques for learning the content by reading and (b) to discover factors which encourage and hinder development of such programs. A questionnaire was sent to 1,124 persons who subscribed to the Journal of Reading. Of these, 466 (41%) were returned. Returns were received from all fifty states. Overwhelmingly, teachers believed content reading programs would improve teaching and learning in their schools. Despite strong advocacy for content reading programs, however, data from this study indicate that approximately 63% of U.S. schools have not considered developing such programs. A number of conditions seem to be associated with schools which have successfully implemented such programs, including beliefs that all teachers share responsibility for guiding students’ reading‐to‐learn skills, strong and supportive administrative leadership, effective inservice education, time for collaborative planning, effective personnel to coordinate the program, beliefs that such programs are needed and will be helpful, and budgets to support time for teachers to plan and participate in inservice education. The absence of these same factors was suggested as the reason schools had not established content reading programs.