Proper placement of students into either remedial writing or Composition I can be crucial to their success in higher education. Using a database of nearly 6,000 students who entered an open admissions community college in Texas, the researchers attempted to discover the best predictor of student success in Composition I. For students who took a locally scored entry/placement test, the best predictor of success in Composition I was the reading portion of the test, not the writing portion. For students taking a statewide test, the best predictor was the writing portion of that test. For students taking both the local and the statewide test, the best predictor of Composition I performance was passing or failing the writing portion of the statewide test. The researchers concluded that the major differences between the 2 groups had to be the grading practices of the locally administered test. The researchers recommend that the community college emulate the grading procedures used by the administrators of the statewide test and/or writing assessment theorists, like E. M. White, who maintain that holistic scoring, with all its notations, is the most successful method of scoring writing in quantity that is now available. He recommends the use of 6 procedures: (1) controlled essay reading; (2) a scoring criteria guide; (3) anchor papers; (4) checks of reading in progress; (5) multiple independent scoring; and (6) evaluation and record keeping. (Contains 3 tables of data and 3 figures.) (Author/(TB)