Current textbooks on reading recommend six scoring systems to be used with cloze tests to find material of suitable difficulty for instruction. These six scoring systems, when applied to a single data source--300 cloze scores obtained from ninth grade students tested with ninth grade content materials--produced varied placements which at present cannot be converted from one to another. Obviously all six scoring systems, differing as they do, cannot make correct placements. Perhaps the greatest disservice of textbook authors, aside from not being up to date and comprehensive in their reporting on cloze procedures, is that they have neglected John Bormuth's evolution in thinking about the rationale upon which many cloze scoring systems have been built. Bormuth particularly singles out criterion scores used with multiple choice tests. If teachers choose to follow the recommendations of textbooks on reading, these textbooks will have a profound effect in the classroom--but there is no basis for knowing whether these effects will be good or bad. (RL)