The first of two papers included in this document addresses two related problems: Problem one: The appropriateness of existing standardized tests of achievement for the assessment of academic function in minority and disadvantaged group member students. Problem two: The appropriateness of such instruments for the assessment of the impact of large-scale educational programs. Gordon asserts that "the problem of large-scale evaluation...is larger than one of what kind of achievement tests to use." It may be that we could endure the problems related to the tests if we were better able to deal with such problems as the following: 1) the nebulousness and variability of treatments, 2) the complex economic, political, and social context in which the treatments are set, 3) the diversity of populations served and goals sought, 4) the reconciliation of necessary and sufficient conditions, and, 5) such limitations of evaluative research technology as: program and population specification, program and population sampling, interchangeable and dialectical nature of the dependent and independent variables, inappropriateness of extant statistical analyses for the study of the dynamic blending of variables by which effects may be explained, the policy of the best generic treatment, and, normative approaches to aggregate data in search of relationships that may be idiosyncratically expressed. The second paper in this document critically reviews the book "Black Consciousness, Identity and Achievement," by Patricia Gurin and Edgar Epps, New York: John Wiley, 1975. (Author/JM)