Alaska has agreed to allow disabled students a wider range of accommodations than they might have elsewhere. Disabled high school students will be allowed the use of dictionaries and computerized spell-checkers on the state's mandatory graduation exam. This has been done in response to legal challenges of the mandatory exam.

Alaskan officials will also allow tests to be read aloud to some students. The state's attorney general Gregg D. Renkes says this allows the state to require accountability of its schools while treating disabled students fairly.

Now comes the hard part: how individual schools are going to carry out the new rules. If they can be put into practice equitably and with some uniformity, everyone will benefit. Certainly it's an experiment for us to watch.