A study was conducted at a Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) to determine the relationship between students' level of basic skills at entry and their pass/fail performance on the College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST). Specifically, the study focused on students' Comparative Guidance and Placement Test (CGP) scores in reading, writing, and basic mathematics; the proportion of students entering MDCC in fall 1981 who had taken the CLAST by March 1984; the passing rates of those who took the CLAST; the current activities of those who had not taken the CLAST; and the CLAST performance of students with low level basic skills. Study findings included the following: (1) about two-thirds of the fall 1981 freshmen scored below the 50th percentile nationally on basic reading skills as measured by the CGP, and were less likely to have taken the CLAST by March 1984; (2) those students who scored in the bottom quartile in the CGP reading test were much less likely to pass the CLAST than those who scored in the second, third, or forth quartiles; (3) a disproportionate number of Blacks (70%) fell in the first quartile in reading basic skills upon MDCC entry; (4) Hispanics who scored in the upper quartiles on the reading test were more likely than either of the other two ethnic groups to have taken the CLAST or to have remained in school; (5) in general, about the same proportion of fall 1981 freshmen were as low on entering writing basic skills as on reading basic skills; (6) students entered MDCC with better computation basic skills than either reading or writing skills; (7) of the 1,114 students who took the CLAST by March 1984, 64% obtained scores above the cuts in all four test areas; and (8) almost 25% of those who passed all sections of the CLAST entered MDCC with placement scores below the 25th percentile in at least one area. (EJV)