This paper represents a summary statement on an investigation into the area of statewide testing of minimum basic skills conducted last year for the New Jersey Task Force on Competency Indicators and Standards. Survey work and the study of source documents led to the following conclusions: (1) there was no obvious and agreed upon set of employment skills but that these, to the extent that employers will even talk about them, varied widely from job to job (perhaps a large scale job analysis might be more revealing); (2) there was no obvious and agreed upon set of social and citizenship skills required by all people; (3) having a minimum competency test on common employment, social and citizenship skills cannot be accomplished at this time without a large scale job analysis; (4) competency tests can be and have been built and are characteristically of the criterion-referenced type; (5) nationally, although competency tests exist and are used typically to measure basic skills in reading and math, rarely does performance on them constitute a graduation requirement; and (6) the state testing program in New Jersey in reading and math, like tests in many other places, seemed to go beyond the basics of reading and math into abstract levels which may not need to be mastered by all or even most students. (Author/MV)