[awbraunstein]

This is what happens when education law is created by politicians. Politicians who get their information from lobbyists lobbying on behalf of the test makers. They believe that more testing is good, mostly because it means more money for them. In NY, the ELA is mandatory for students in grades 1-10 iirc. And these are the scores we are judging teachers on. There are many teachers in schools who are given classrooms of students who need more attention and won't perform as well on exams.

We need to seriously rethink education and how we are testing students and teachers.

[yummyfajitas]

Politicians who get their information from lobbyists lobbying on behalf of the test makers.

Yes, the politicians are clearly in the pockets of test makers. After all, the test makers are the #5 and #10 biggest politicals donors ever.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A

Oops, my mistake - it's actually teachers (generally opposed to accountability) who are the big political donors, not the test makers.

[icarus_drowning]

A friend of my summed this up in a twitter posting the other day: "Those who can, teach. Those who can't pass laws about teaching."

[waterlesscloud]

Education is going to run by politicians as long as politicians are allocating the funds for it.

There is no way around this fact.