James P. Ward states in his July 9 letter to the editor that one-third of our (Levittown's) fourth grade students cannot read at grade level. I find this amazing as 97 percent to 99 percent of these very same students scored at or above the SRP (State Reference Point) last year on the PEP reading comprehension test in third grade with many scoring very high. Did they suffer catastrophic brain damage over the summer?

The answer, of course, is that this new "language arts" test measures in a very subjective way a student's ability to generate written responses to reading materials and a listening activity. These written responses are scored on a scale of 1 (low) to 4 (high). I believe that the third grade PEP test which was designed by the College Board gave a better grade level indication than this new test does as it compared a student's reading ability directly with the readability level of text books used in specific grade levels. This letter is not an excuse for poor scores but meant to serve as a clarification of what this new test measures.

P.S. Kudos to all those who are going to use our parks and pools to help our teens channel all that energy in positive ways that are also fun. As a community we talked about the need for special programs for our teenagers at the Committee for the Year 2000 and at the 40th and 50th Anniversary of Levittown meetings and now finally something is being done.