As a supplement to standardized reading tests, the Philadelphia Public School System prepared three parallel sets of reading tests to meet the following criteria: (1) be suitable for grouping secondary pupils within Title I reading classes; (2) be group administered and machine scoreable; (3) be short enough to be administered in one or two regular classroom sessions; (4) have a range of reading levels from grades one to nine; (5) be of interest to junior high pupils; (6) have minimal costs; and (7) have parallel forms. The tests were assembled, pretested on a group of 400 secondary school pupils, revised, and readministered to about 800 pupils in grades 8 and 11. Reliability data are reported. Test difficulty was assessed by various readability formulas and validated by comparing test scores with teachers' judgments of student reading ability. The new test, the Secondary Reading Assessment (SRA) was correlated with the California Achievement Test. The SRA was judged to be useful over a wide range of reading ability with a minimum number of chance scores. (Author/CTM)