COLUMBIA--The U.S. Education Department plans to pump about $88 million into South Carolina schools during the next six years to train thousands of teachers and buy books to ensure all students can read by the third grade.

The new federal No Child Left Behind Act requires teachers to use research-based teaching methods to deal with children's different learning styles and monitor student progress.

The grant will provide intensive training for the state's nearly 20,000 kindergarten- through third-grade teachers and about 5,000 special-education teachers through a series of six workshops.

In the first year of the grant, the state will dole out about $11 million to 36 schools that compete for subgrants that can be used to tailor reading programs for each community.

"Reading really is rocket science," said state Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum. She said this program helps teachers "find what it takes to break it down and get that child reading on grade level."