The Navajo Reading Study officially came to an end in 1977. However, “another offshoot of the NRS was the Navajo-English Dictionary Project directed by Robert Young and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1974 to 1977.  This last project culminated in the massive and universally lauded Young and Morgan dictionary published by UNM Press in 1980” (Bills MS. 1989).

The program now began to be called the Navajo Language Program (NLP), as it had expanded and continued beyond the original Navajo Reading Study.