The purpose of this paper is to examine the assessment procedures initiated and used by most Canadian provinces during the past decade to describe public school reading achievement, to identify commonalities and differences among those procedures, and to comment on the significance of the identified trends. The stated purposes of evaluation included information for decision-making, the provision of comparative information across time or location, curriculum improvement, professional development, and the creation of test banks for teacher use. During the late sixties and early seventies, most provinces moved away from "departmental examinations" toward the establishment of "joint committees/task forces" on evaluation, designed to provide more public input into educational decision-making. The latter half of the seventies produced an observable movement towards the use of standardized achievement tests in the assessment of provincial progress. The early eighties saw the emergence of provincially constructed achievement tests similar in nature to commercially produced tests, but based specifically on the curricula in force in a particular province. Recent decisions in Alberta and British Columbia appear to reintroduce compulsory province-wide examinations, possibly signalling a repetition of the cycle begun in the late sixties. (BW)