The tests don't reflect the kinds of teaching styles we wish to employ and experiment with. Superintendents and principals are losing their jobs for poor performing schools, so trying an untested pedagogy is not going to sit well with too many. Couple this with the fact that teachers are just not getting up to speed with good pedagogical use of the technology in the classroom. Sec of Ed Riley challenged the schools of ed to better prepare the teachers in better pedagogical uses of technology on Feb 16. This was followed by the CEO Forum report on Feb 22 saying the same thing.
Schools now have more and more technology.
Existing teachers, and the average age of teachers in K-12 is 46, are not about to change without some incentive and unions protect this reluctance. New teachers come in ill prepared. And principals, not teachers, might get cash rewards if their score's test score go up. All good pedagogical advice from Sophocles to Vygotsky tells us we learn best by doing. And yet we are getting deeper and deeper into rote education and farther and farther away from the advancement of learning.