[electromagnetic]

I think my biggest issue is that standardized testing is loved so much because it appears to work.

UK has significantly higher graduation rates for both High school and for college than the US, and the UK just loves its standardized testing (it's where I grew up).

It's great in that those who would be under-performers are held to a higher standard than they otherwise would be. There's no getting a free pass for playing sports. The year I graduated high school, my school ranked as one of the top 5 in the UK public school system (it was also the only one that the examiners made no mention of ways to improve, meaning it was likely the top school in the country) and I didn't even know we had a football (soccer) team that competed against other schools. In fact, the only competition I was aware my school entered for sports was the cross country marathon because one of our class members (son of two Kenyan immigrants, no one was surprised as he used to lap us in track and field) won the competition.

However, it's bad in that the over-performers are held to no standard whatsoever. I was an over-performer. I got one of the highest grades in class and did nothing, didn't hand in homework because anything that was to the standardized test I aced. One of my elementary school teachers thought I was slow and wanted me to get tested for dyslexia or other learning disorders and said I would fail the Key Stage 1 tests. I was 3rd in my class. The bar was so low that me and my "nerdy" friends in high school barely worked in classes. My chemistry class we would be finished our work within 20 minutes and spend the rest of the class talking with the teacher.

There was no drive to excel. There was no "this kid's smart, lets focus on him more". I passed so they didn't give a fuck, it meant they could spend more time on the dumb kids and subsequently boost their budgets.

[xorcist]

Of course. Testing always appears to work, if there is no reliable way to measure the measurements. It's not specific to testing students.

If you benchmark on your bug count, it will go down, but there is no reason to believe quality will improve.

Regarding the over-performers in school, I've always had this idea that they should help teach in some way. It can give meaning to bored children in a way that few other things can.

[walterbell]

This may even work when "teaching" an avatar, http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/30/the-protege-effect/

"how can children, still learning themselves, teach others? One answer: They can tutor younger kids. The benefits of this practice were indicated by a pair of articles published in 2007 in the journals Science and Intelligence. The studies concluded that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born brothers and sisters and suggested that their higher IQs result from the time they spend showing their younger siblings the ropes."

[Angostura]

I'm sorry - that doesn't sound like an inherent problem with the standard assessment system, it sounds like a failure in the school leadership team to inculcate a drive for excellence. At the end of Key stage 2 at primary school, you should have been entered for Level 6 tests in addition to the normal papers which max out at grade 5.

I'm surprised if your secondary school was examined by Ofsted, and found to be faultless - they are normally very hot on schools being able to engage talented and gifted. Although, as an independent, was it inspected?

[electromagnetic]

Yes it was inspected, but funnily enough (thinking back over a decade here) I can't think of anyone being engaged to get them into anything to keep them advancing.

I think it could have gotten anomalously high because the next time it got tested it dropped drastically, although there was an exodus of the better teachers.

The whole thing had a startup getting its IPO feel. Once it got that report it took maybe two years for the best teachers to be gone and moved on to being department heads elsewhere.