At present, states have no consistent manner in which limited-English-proficient (LEP) students are assessed on statewide or district-level minimum competency examinations. In some states, LEP students need to take the same minimum competency examinations under the same rules as other students to graduate or be promoted. Competency tests have the capacity to improve the education of the students in our country's schools. To be effective, however, they need to be linked closely to instruction. That is, they need to have high instructional and curricular validity. Furthermore, the curriculum needs to drive the content of the examinations rather than vice versa. One must question whether a minimum competency test can possibly be equally valid from the perspective of curricular and instructional validity and not biased for LEP students, on the very basis of their differential needs and educational programs. For competency tests to be most useful for improving the education of LEP students, it is imperative that the tests be closely tied to the curriculum, be thoroughly integrated with the curriculum, aim toward providing diagnostic instructional and remedial feedback, provide scores that are readily interpretable by educational professionals, and become less threatening than they appear to have become. Responses to the paper by Michelle Hewlett-Gomez and Lawrence Rudner are appended. (VWL)