Demonstrates the role the guarantee of due process can play in ensuring that vital interests in public education not be lost through erroneous assessments of a student's proficiency in basic skills, and describes the limits constitutional and statutory guarantees of equal educational opportunity place on the use of competency testing. (Author/IRT)

Issues surrounding the statewide competency testing of at-risk students are discussed. Sanctions, such as negative evaluations of educational programs associated with such tests, used to fall most heavily on schools and staff, but tests are increasingly becoming prerequisites for promotion and graduation, with increasing impact on students.…

Minimal competency testing is the most recent evolution of the accountability movement and of the competency based education movement. It focuses on the basic academic skills of reading, writing, and arithemtic. It presumes the state will set educational objectives, and that the local school district will conduct its program so that the objectives…

Based on telephone interviews with educational officials from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, an overview of the use and impact of standardized tests in the United States during the 1986-87 school year was developed. In addition to interviewing officials from all state departments of education, officials from 56 sample school districts…

This paper discusses two examples of federal agencies which administer laws fundamental to the protection and advancement of the educational interests of minority children: the Office for Civil Rights, and the Division of Education for the Disadvantaged. Provisions of these laws can be construed as protective standards which may provide the major…

Recognizing the lack of public confidence in the schools, public officials and educators should discuss the proper use and limitations of competency testing and the implementation of national tests. Competency tests should be used for diagnosis, for certifying that students possess basic skills, and for public awareness. They should not be the…

About half the states in the U.S., either by legislative or administrative action, have moved toward the imposition of statewide performance standards in their elementary and secondary schools. Typically these standards pertain to the basic skills--reading, mathematical computation, and written and oral expression. Almost all of these programs…