The New Jersey Basic Skills Council seventh annual report to the Board of Higher Education looks at the status of the reading, writing, and mathematical skills of incoming freshmen and of the effectiveness of remedial programs in its public colleges and universities. A comparison is presented of students who needed and completed remediation; students who did not need remediation; and those who needed remediation but did not complete it. Findings are described for the New Jersey Higher Education System and for individual colleges. Seven outcome indicators reviewed for the student groups are passing rates, retention rates, college credits earned, grade point average, successful survival rates, pre- and post-testing, and performance in subsequent courses. Part-time remediation is noted. Conclusions include the need for improvement of the quality and completeness of the data on remedial outcomes that colleges collect. and note that New Jersey's remedial programs are successful in raising the skill levels of students who complete remediation. Recommendations include having all public colleges use exit-testing for their remedial programs and making sure all faculty teaching basic reading, writing, and mathematics access the latest research on effective teaching. Two appendices show sample tables (i.e. testing and placement of students, enrollment in and completion of remedial courses, and pre- and post-test results for remedial courses in reading, writing, math computation, and elementary algebra) and a listing of areas of research for future use. Tables are included. Contains two references. (SM)