Contends that New Jersey's Minimum Basic Skills (MBS) tests in reading and mathematics waste time and money and should not be used by the state as the criteria to measure school and district performance. Low scores are the result of social conditions schools cannot correct by themselves. (Author/MLF)

The New Jersey Commissioner of Education replies that the Minimum Basic Skills (MBS) tests are not the sole criterion used to measure school and district performance and that some schools manage to teach well despite their students' low socioeconomic level. (Author/MLF)

Radical, but nevertheless serious, suggestions are made to change ineffective schools. (MLF)

While minimum competency testing may cause education to become less pluralistic, its effect will weigh most heavily upon those who fail to pass the tests. Because such testing does nothing to improve teaching or learning, one result will be to hold the student responsible for the educational system's failure. (Author/GC)

This is a slightly abridged version of the report of the National Academy of Education panel, convened at the request of HEW Secretary Joseph Califano and Assistant Secretary for Education Mary F. Berry, to study recent declines in student achievement and methods of educational improvement. (SJL)

In this paper, the Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction reviews issues surrounding competency testing and describes Wisconsin's response to a nationwide effort to enhance student learning through competency based education. Efforts of the past two decades to improve traditional educational practice in Wisconsin are outlined.…

The New Jersey State Department of Education is implementing a program to evaluate every school on its basic skills instruction, improvement plans, and legal compliance. Unsatisfactory schools face labeling and a comprehensive program review. This article outlines the state plan and the New Jersey Education Association's objections to it. (SJL)

Using interviews, observation, and archival documents, researchers traced the 4-year history of a "freestanding" interorganizational arrangement for school improvement in Santa Clara County (California). Called the "AB 65 Elementary Consortium," the interdistrict collaboration was started in response to California Assembly Bill…

A controversial Arkansas law requires that all currently employed certified teachers pass a specially developed literacy test. This article describes the rational for teacher testing in terms of professional, ethical, and political issues. Testing is necessary for public support for reforms that improve the professional status and salaries of…

Testing teachers for recertification to ensure that all certified teachers and administrators can read and write adequately is supported. Insofar as possible, tests must be developed and used in ways that are not demeaning to educational professionals. Recertification testing may recapture public support for education, which has seriously eroded.…

The Knoxville City Schools (KCS) Proficiency Project ran from fall 1984 to spring 1987 in three Knoxville, Tennessee, middle schools and three high schools. Students in three of the eight KCS high schools were scoring consistently lower than pupils in the other schools on the grade 9 State Proficiency Test, especially in math (M) and language arts…

Resulting from a project involving district, state, and federal educational agencies, the papers in this, the first of two volumes, are intended to provide information from research and practice that can help school districts in their efforts to make decisions about goals and methods of basic skills instruction. The topics of the papers in the…

A method for improving curriculum and schools through the local development of competency tests in basic skills--the Competency-Rossville Model (CRM)--is outlined. The method was originated in the school system of Rossville (Illinois) and has been tested in five other midwestern school systems. The approach leads the faculty of the school, with…

Schools are legally responsible for delivering to all children what the state and school boards mandate in a prescribed curriculum, while teachers are held accountable for its delivery. A major part of this responsibility relates to the teaching of the basic skills of reading, writing, and computation. A current trend to assure the teaching of…

This report provides Minnesota legislators with background information on establishing state educational standards and periodic testing to measure student progress. Scientific management, the accountability movement, and the basic education movement were educational trends of the 1970's providing pressure on states to set standards to improve…