5 Denver Schools Prevail In Battle To Waive Tests

By Robert Rothman

Five Denver elementary schools seeking to exercise newly won authority earned a significant victory this month when the Denver Board of Education approved the schools' requests to waive some testing requirements.

The action, the first such vote under the city's year-old school-based governance system, came a week after a contentious board meeting at which school officials and representatives of collaborative decisionmaking bodies--the local governing boards established by a 1991 teachers' contract--engaged in a heated war of words.

The members of the local school panels had criticized central administrators for failing to act quickly on the waiver requests and for enacting a new testing policy without seeking their input. (See Education...