In discussing the third national assessment of reading and literature, four major points can be made. First, norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests ignore serious ethical and measurement problems, namely, we don't know enough about individual differences to do such testing and the outcome, social class tracking, is ethically repulsive. Second, comprehending and interpreting literary texts is a subset of reading not separate from it. Third, descriptive information from the national assessment survey is useful in considering notions about developmental differences in the ways students interpret and evaluate which are attributable to developmental growth, schooling, and personal inclinations. Fourth, domain-referenced assessment is the best standardized procedure for finding out what students know and what teachers and schools can do. It eliminates the ambiguity created by behavior factors by representative sampling from a well-defined set of tasks, by referring to the logical relationship between a set of items in a test and a well-defined domain represented by those items, and by estimating the kinds of behavior students are capable of within a defined domain. (TJ) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt with in this document: Procedures (Exercise Development).