[xyzzyz]

What is the alternative, though? Even if schools taught actual skills and knowledge, and didn’t focus on teaching to the test, we’d still want and need some method to verify that they are doing so, and that the students actually mastered the material being taught. This means at least some kind of tests.

In my opinion, the problem is not with the testing regime, or even “teaching to the test”. It’s the tests themselves that suck. The top priorities for tests designed and used today are ease and efficiency at mass administration, ease of grading, and reduction of subjective in favor of objective measures. Is it any wonder that multiple choice questions are king?

When I went to university in Eastern Europe (majored in Mathematics), in many courses we had a final oral exam. The professor would drill into you, and would not get distracted by regurgitation of irrelevant memorized stanzas, he wanted a clear explanation of everything he asked about. This approach to testing is not perfect — for one, time limitations only allow to cover rather small part of the topic, and you might get lucky to get something you actually know. At the same time, there is really no way to teach and study to an oral exam other than actual understanding of the subject matter. However, this is insanely inefficient for the grader: this makes testing a full week’s worth of constant work, as opposed to few hours of just sitting on an exam, and then few more hours grading (even shorter if it’s mostly multiple choice problems). No wonder teachers prefer the latter.