Traditionally, local school boards have had the power to assign students to classes and to set standards for promotion and graduation; with this authority has gone the discretion to decide what role pupil testing will play in the local schools. Courts have been reluctant to interfere with school board decisions on methodology, of which they…

Legal issues of minimum competency testing derive from federal and state constitutional, statutory, and regulatory provisions, and from common law. Constitutional provisions for equal protection, due process, and freedom of belief and privacy, are primarily federal; education provisions are state mandated. Only four court cases have directly…