Ah, same time frame I was working for the schools (having graduated in 1975). Indiana has had a strong committment to education during most of my life. We insitiuted a state-wide system for tracking student progress in basic skills beginning in 1980, and we did a good job, but failed to pilot the system; if you think you know something about what sysadmins call "lusers", imagine a group of people who talk all day to 2nd graders then you have to explain a command-driven interface to them... ...to make a long story short, basic skills testing got bad press from teachers in Indiana, even before the parents started getting a more accurate idea of how their kids were actually performing. -dq