Measurement and evaluation have become major public issues in the legislatures and the courts. Testing legislation represents two extremes: (1) confidence in external objective measurement for high school teacher and occupational certification; and (2) distrust of the results. Since 1978, truth-in-testing bills for admissions or other standardized tests have been proposed or enacted in several states; most resemble the LaValle bill enacted in New York state. Measurement specialists have been summoned to testify in the courts, as well as the legislatures, concerning the validity of employment and educational tests. Professionals must accept their new public role, by learning to communicate with the public. They should learn to discriminate between sincere interest in understanding and improving testing, versus advocacy of a position that all tests are biased and wasteful. Secondly, they should simplify communication by explaning only a few measurement concepts, such as aptitude, achievement, error of measurement, norms, correlation, and restriction of range. Finally, because test results are often vaguely stated, specialists should either give the best answer or admit they don't know or have no comment. (CP)