[jpiasetz]

Wat? What does this have to do with standardize testing? The article doesn't mention standardized testing once.

Standardize test has nothing to do with measuring individual students or individual teachers. It's a method for measure large scale changes. For example does all day kindergarten lead to student being better educated? Thanks to standardized testing in Ontario it can be measured whether or not students improve with all day kindergarten. You can argue for better test and you can argue for better application of the results of tests but there is no argument against benchmarking.

Without a benchmark you're just shooting blind. People who are against standardized testing are the Jenny McCarthy of education. They think they can just tell when an education method is effective without measuring it

[pekk]

Yes, you are exactly right. I realized in high school that my standardized test scores meant absolutely nothing except as a kind of survey of the school. By no means were teachers "teaching to the test". And the material measured by the standardized tests was so basic/remedial that there is no way it would have been difficulty for AP track students - so fast changes in those scores would have been a pretty significant indicator of institutional failure.