In spring 1988, a study was conducted at Cuyahoga Community College's Western Campus (Ohio) to measure the reading comprehension level of a sample of 1988 students and to compare their reading test scores with the scores of students who had taken the same test in 1979 and 1980; to determine if there were a correlation between the number of items a student completed on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) and the number of items he or she answered correctly; to determine the percentage of high-risk students in the study population; and to measure improvements in students' reading comprehension during the course of the semester. The NDRT was administered in class to a sample of 246 students in ENG-099 and ENG-101 classes at the beginning and end of the courses. Study findings included the following: (1) there were no significant differences in test scores based on gender, age, day/evening attendance, full-/part-time status, employment, marital status, and length of time at the college; (2) the 1988 students had a significantly lower level of reading comprehension than students in the 1979 and 1980 studies; (3) students born in other countries, students enrolled in ENG-099, and students with grade point averages lower than 2.5 were identified as high-risk sub-groups; and (4) there was no significant improvement in reading comprehension for the sample group (though the low number of students who took both the pre- and post-test reduced the validity of the post-test results). (EJV)