ABSTRACT
With the tightening of academic standards and an emphasis on high-stakes testing as the primary tool for assessing progress, often those students who come from poor or minority backgrounds, may be excluded from an education. These students and others may suffer stress or burn-out from over testing. At the same time, egregious situations can arise that deprive students of an education. The cases in this chapter reflect those circumstances as they address issues ranging from instituting racial quotas, achieving equity in bilingual classes, misclassifying a student as intellectually disabled, and denying access to indigent rural poor. The last court decision challenges deplorable conditions in an urban school where an appeals court, for the first time, recognizes access to literacy as a fundamental right.
