In the past twenty years, the number of educational tests with high-stakes consequences-such as promotion to the next grade level or graduating from high school-has increased. At the same time, the difficulty of the tests has also increased. In Texas, a Latina state legislator introduced and lobbied for a bill that would take such factors as teacher recommendations, portfolios of student work, and grades into account for the students-usually students of color-who failed such tests. The bill was defeated.Using several types of ethnographic study (personal interviews, observati