Since 1969, the Oregon State Board of Education has undertaken to reverse the trend toward providing a single, rigid program for all students, regardless of their abilities, interests, needs, or learning styles. The new standards focus on the concept of providing students an opportunity to learn and demonstrate specific "survival" competencies. Each district must clarify to its own satisfaction the point of view of "survival" in order to identify the basic skills and abilities that all students should acquire as a result of public schooling. Following adoption of the new high school graduation requirements for Oregon public schools, teachers and administrators in local districts joined with State Department of Education specialists in identifying and describing the minimum or"survival" competencies every student should have on completion of 12 years public schooling. Identification of these competencies was meant to provide all districts with models to be used in selecting and describing those competencies essential to assure all students survival level functioning -- at individual, wage-earner, and citizen levels. (Author/WM)