All students who can read, write and calculate at the high school level should have access to a diploma program in high school that allows them to demonstrate their competency. Our son was denied such access but by chance found another way.

Fairfax County's External Diploma Program is an alternative way to earn a high school diploma through demonstrating to an assessor performance-based tasks that require high school-level literacy skills. Multiple-choice testing is minimal.

Unfortunately, the EDP is not made available to high school-age students. One must fail to earn a high school diploma the traditional way before such an alternative is available.

Completing the EDP was a confidence-building experience for our dyslexic son, whom we home-schooled from age 11 to 17. We focused on his strengths -- comprehension and math -- while addressing his weaknesses, and we minimized multiple-choice testing. How he was to earn a diploma we were not sure, but we knew our priority needed to be literacy. We took him back to high school at 17 for transition programming. There we were told that many years of multiple-choice testing were ahead of him.

No alternatives were available. After he turned 18, the EDP provided an appropriate avenue to a diploma that public high school would not.

Thanks to home-schooling, our son did not need to be instructed in how to complete the EDP. He had acquired the skills necessary to handle the relevant curriculum by age 17. What he needed was access to high school courses designed to help him make the transition to college and/or work, as well as an appropriate diploma program that minimized multiple-choice testing.

Because the EDP -- unlike Virginia's General Education Development, or GED, option -- is not available to teens in high school, our son was not allowed to enroll in classes with his peers at his local public school while completing it. Shouldn't this national diploma program be available to high school-age teens in Virginia public schools? We'd like to see our tax money buy a more flexible public education for children who still need what our son was denied.

-- Doris Baker and C.S. Meltzer

Falls Church