Describes the complex and sometimes conflicting components involved in reading assessment issues and proposes a solution that involves linkages among assessment audiences and approaches. Concludes with remarks about how school districts might pull together all the pieces and solve the assessment puzzle for themselves. (PRA)

Describes an informal test for determining a student's ability to use context clues in decoding unfamiliar words. (TO)

Evaluates the Computer-Based Assessment Instrument (CRAI) as a test for reading proficiency. Notes strengths of CRAI, including its use as a quick assessment of silent reading comprehension level, and the problems with readability and content specific words lists and the lack of scoring features. (JC)

Describes the Group Comprehension Matrix and the Individual Comprehension Matrix, assessment instruments that teachers can use to help them make student placement decisions. (FL)

Concludes that there are numerous problems with the test studied. Argues that the abilities it assesses and their relationship to reading and reading instruction are not sufficiently understood to warrant the test's use. (FL)

Discusses informal reading inventories and suggests that teachers adjust the inventories to their own teaching practices to assure reflection of students' ability to perform in the classrooms. (MB)

Discusses a study which compared informal reading inventory formats and which found that the most accurate measurement involved silent reading followed by oral reading. (MB)

Concludes that the test has a well-designed reading booklet and a carefully constructed manual, but that it has a narrow applicability. (FL)

Argues that the tests used to measure reading achievement do not reflect recent advances in the understanding of the reading process, and that effective instruction best can be fostered by resolving the discrepancy between what is known and what is measured. (FL)

Describes a collaboration among policy makers, test developers, curriculum specialists, researchers, and classroom teachers in Michigan that has produced a new interactive definition of reading, new statewide reading objectives, and efforts to develop statewide tests that are more consistent with current theory and research. (FL)

Reports findings of a study of current practices in kindergarten programs showing that teachers seldom use test results to adapt instruction to individual needs. (FL)

Reports that reading instructional level scores of a teacher constructed informal reading inventory, the commercially prepared Basic Reading Inventory, the Metropolitan Achievement Test, and students' actual level of placement in books are roughly comparable but that the Wide Range Achievement Test reading subtest places children much higher. (FL)

Indicates that the test knowledge of teachers, administrators, district personnel, and legislators is limited. (FL)

Describes a modification of the cloze procedure which was used to assess the reading achievement of selected students in the Mariana Islands. (MKM)