Three paradigms for assessing children's vocabulary knowledge were evaluated in this study: synonym, synonym in context, and cloze. The vocabulary tests, a paper-and-pencil adaptation of the on-line tests used in two previous studies, were administered to 830 second through seventh grade students. Subjects performed similarly on the three formats across the six grades tested. No one test format was better than either of the others within or across grades. But there were significant mean differences in scores obtained under the three formats overall. These differences ranked synonym, synonym in context, and cloze in order of difficulty from easiest to most difficult. When subjects were stratified by reading comprehension ability, scores on any one format were not significantly higher overall, than scores on either of the other two formats. Some differences did appear for the stratified groups. Low comprehenders scored higher on synonym than on synonym in context, and intermediate comprehenders scored somewhat higher on cloze than on synonym in context. It is possible that further differences in vocabulary performance might appear if children are grouped into finer categories of comprehension level. (Author/RD)