ABSTRACT
Tests exert an enormous impact on curriculum. Minimum competency tests have upset that equilibrium. Again, the tests come from outside the curriculum process, but there is no need for the authors to reflect teaching at all. On the contrary, the test is typically mandated as a result of frustration with curricula. The express aim is often to alter curricula in directions chosen by those who institute the tests, most often in the direction of "basic skills." Minimum competency will have substantial effects on education in terms of both method and content. In the case of minimum competency, the method/content spiral runs the risk of winding down to a tight knot, a core of whatever "basics" the test-spawned instructional methods can handle most readily. That process can obscure the original goals of minimum competency, resulting in content that bears little relationship to what common sense tells the basics really are.
