[jeff95350]

"are you equally comfortable being the widget that's being processed within the assembly line, and whether the widget is getting the best value?"

A valid point. There are many ways of learning though, and if you want instruction and materials personalized to you, those are available -- albeit at a much higher cost. And there are other, self-directed methods of learning that are a much lower cost than either method (e.g., going to a library, doing research online, etc.). [Aside: who pays the cost is a separate issue, but someone must pay it.]

Given that society is constrained by scarce resources, I think that re-using tests is a perfectly reasonable allocation of resources for many teaching situations. Other materials are re-used regularly, such as textbooks, and there's nothing personal about that. Would you say that using the same textbook as someone else turns you into a "widget"?

It's unfortunate that your educational experience was so unpleasant. My K-12 experience seemed quite wasteful as well. But I think that has more to do with incompetence and laziness. Doing more personalized teaching requires more teachers, which means they will have an even harder time attracting enough quality talent, and an even harder time firing bad teachers. That doesn't sound like a net win on quality to me, even if it is more personalized.