The United States counts as one of its major achievements, that of being the first country in the world to attempt to give education beyond the three R\u27s to all its youth, regardless of intellectual endowment or socioeconomic status. Investigation of this premise reveals a gap between practice and pretensions. This is evidenced by the fact that in recent years, colleges, universities, businesses, vocational institutions, and industry have been highly critical of the large number of high school graduates with deficiencies in basic learning skills. These deficiencies impede academic, job related and/or job performance. Such an indictment of the secondary educational system has caused some state legislatures to consider proposals that all high school graduates be required to successfully complete a state developed competency based testing instrument to qualify for graduation
