Intended both to evaluate the California testing program's success in assessing student achievement in the basic skills and to suggest possible improvements in the program, this report includes an executive summary evaluating current testing procedures, describing experimental studies on new ways of testing and reporting testing information, and making recommendations for improving the current program; an overview of the testing program, the specific questions posed for this report, and a list of criteria and assumptions for evaluating tests; and a review of tests of basic skills at the state, school district, and classroom levels and applies the report's evaluation procedures are applied to these tests. Descriptions of norm and criterion referenced tests are included in the appendix. (MM)