Word recognition, factual recall, and inferential comprehension skills of 30 fifth-year students who had been in an open education classroom for four years were compared with similar skills of fifth-year pupils who had been in a traditional classroom for four years. Pupils had been placed in an open or traditional classroom by parental choice, but did not differ in parental socioeconomic level or measured IQ. Results indicated that the two groups of students did not differ significantly in any of the measured reading skills, using an alpha level of .01. The pupils from the open classrooms did obtain superior word-recognition scores, at the .05 level. Observation also suggested that, where open-education classrooms and traditional classrooms existed side by side without polarization of groups, there was a slow merging of ideas and practices. (Author/AA)