Truth in testing, competency testing, and intelligence tests constitute the central topics of this newsletter. The authors review a report prepared by the Education Commission of the States on truth-in-testing legislation and litigation, covering recent efforts at the state and federal levels to open the testing process to public scrutiny. They…

To help public schools minimize litigation, this newsletter recommends constitutional and legal training for public school officials and examines relevant court cases involving school official liability, intelligence tests, and religion in the schools. According to the authors, the Maine v. Thiboutot and Owen v. City of Independence cases…

Commentary and advice in four legal areas are offered in this newsletter on educational law. First, the document outlines preventive legal review for public educators in four basic steps, including anticipation of legal challenges, evaluation of the challenges' legal merits, consideration of the policy issues raised by potential challenges, and…

Advocates for minority students charge that special education placement of racially or culturally different students is unfair because the tests, standardized on white, middle-class children, do not accurately reflect the learning rate or potential achievement level of others. For this reason, reliance on IQ tests for placement of minority…