Florida's Commissioner of Education recently appointed a task force to review current standards for the College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) and the effect of raising the levels of passing scores that are proposed for 1989. There is now a sufficient history of the CLAST to provide an understanding of the program's benefits and liabilities. An analysis of currently available information about the test indicates that: (1) the imposition of the 1989 CLAST standards will drastically reduce the number of students, particularly minorities, fully eligible to proceed to the upper divisions of the State University System, though many of these students would be predicted to have "successful performance through the baccalaureate level"; (2) the number of students taking the CLAST has decreased steadily with each change in its standards; (3) redesigned curricula and increased student expectations initially improved test scores, but this had the concomitant and undesirable outcome of narrowing the undergraduate experience by eliminating opportunities to take courses in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities; (4) level test scores of recent years indicate that stronger institutional effort will be needed to achieve limited gain; (5) time limitations of CLAST adversely affect some examinees, particularly minorities; (6) K-12 education reforms have not decreased the number of academically deficient students entering higher education; (7) the current use of CLAST as an upper division criterion ignores educational research which promotes a combination of measures to predict academic success; and (8) CLAST as an admissions tool ignores faculty judgement and student performance. (AYC)