Lawsuit Spotlights Battle Over Basic Skills Testing

PORTLAND, Ore. — Aaron Weingarten is taking accelerated math and advanced placement history. He's on the A-Team for the Science Bowl. He plays trumpet, baritone sax and tuba and sings in two choirs, while earning a 3.57 grade point average. But when it came to taking Oregon's new statewide competency test in writing, he called in sick rather than risk flunking it.

The 16-year-old high school sophomore has dysgraphia, a learning disability that, unless he's using a computer with a spell check function, renders the words he writes woefully different from the ones he has in his head. And Oregon's new Certificate of Initial Mastery assessment, the key item in a broad educational reform program, doesn't tolerate bad spelling.

Flunk the "conventions"--spelling, grammar and punctuation--and you flunk the test. No more advanced placement courses. No more enhanced diploma. Aaron isn't even sure he won't have to repeat the 10th grade.

For more than 30,000 students with learning disabilities in Oregon, competency testing--a movement that is sweeping the nation--could prove the single greatest hurdle in a lifetime of struggling to overcome learning disabilities like dyslexia that a generation ago would have labeled some of the brightest students as slow or stupid. Last year, more than 42,000 in the Los Angeles Unified School District alone were classified as learning disabled.

Across the country, 25 states are now or soon will be requiring competency tests for high school graduation, while five others use such "exit tests" for honors graduation or a special designation on students' diplomas. In California, Gov. Gray Davis has called for a tough statewide testing program.

The writing tests administered last month to Oregon's high school sophomores are the target of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of parents and students Monday in U.S. district court here. The case highlights a growing concern about the tests, which states are hoping will stem the tide of students graduating from high school without mastering the basics of reading, writing, math and history.

Push to Test May Be Too Hard

The push to test has moved faster than the availability of research on how to accommodate the needs of students who fall outside the mainstream--especially students with high intelligence and good mastery of basic content but with learning disabilities that may make them poor test takers without help, experts say.