A study was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) to assess the relationship between students' basic skills performance and three outcome measures: retention, graduation, and academic progress. Specifically, the study compared the performance and persistence of White, Black, and Hispanic students while equating for basic skills performance as measured by Comparative Guidance and Placement (CGP) test scores in reading, writing, and computation. Students achieving above the placement test score on all three CGP tests and those falling below this score were analyzed as separate groups, and quartile ranges were determined for each of the three tests based on national norms. Study findings, based on the records of all full-time, first-time-in-college students entering MDCC in fall 1980, included: (1) by summer 1982, 19.4% of the Hispanic students, 18.8% of the White students, and 7.6% of the Black students had graduated; (2) Hispanic students also had higher reenrollment rates (68.6%) than Black or White students (52.0% and 5l.7%, respectively); (3) retention and graduation rates were significantly higher for students scoring above the placement test score on the CGP than for those scoring below it within each ethnic group; and (4) 40% of the White students, 60% of the Hispanic students, and 80% of the Black students scored in the lowest two quartiles on the reading and written English portions of the CGP. A separate report on retention patterns is included. (HB)