So what's going on with this mad testing mania is we are not educating our children. That is a just simply mad way to talk about school reform. I think it's working, and I think this sort of thing, if you have a good test, and a teacher is teaching the content that's covered in the test, I think that sort of teaching to the test is good. It's not encouraging the children to learn more. That's the kind of cheating and no one wants to see that happen.
Annual testing is a problem even if the measures are reasonably good.
Because when you have tests every year the expectation then becomes that all kids must develop in lockstep fashion. To say that every kid has to be at the same place at age seven violates every bit of understanding we have of developmental realities. But some tests are worse than others. Even multiple choice questions that are tricky can't give kids a chance to explain their answers much less generate answers, so they can't give us a sense of what kids understand. If a test it timed than what it's really measuring is speed not thoughtfulness.