In 1978 the New York State Board of Regents initiated action to establish statewide high school graduation standards for reading comprehension. The process began by measuring the readability levels of materials used in core courses and materials that adults normally read (newspapers, news magazines, and feature magazines). To do this, representative passages selected from all the types of reading materials were scaled according to the Bormuth mean cloze formula. The Board then determined that the "Degrees of Reading Power" (DRP) test series would be the official instrument for measuring student attainment, because passages in the DRP series were also scaled with the Bormuth mean cloze formula. From a comparison of all the readability levels (course materials, adult reading materials, and DRP tests), the Board set a tentative standard, requiring that all graduating students be able to read materials with a Bormuth value of .3812 at a 65% probability of success. This reading level approximates both a DRP reading passage of intermediate difficulty and the mean readability levels of 10th/11th grade course materials. Following public reaction to the proposed criteria, the Board adopted the tentative standard as the final standard in March 1979, agreeing to update the standards as additional information became available. (RL)