As to “teaching to the test,” that is what always has happened in school, at least in any conventional setting (esp. if you combine that concept with designing the test to measure what you want kids to know). It seems to me the biggest problem is that states (I take FL as one example) test but ONCE per year, creating one pressure-laden opportunity for testing, and and necessarily narrowing the focus of testing due to the “short” test time (a few hours/year). So the problem is (a) limited test focus, not testing per se, so that “teaching to the test” then narrows the focus of learning, and (b) high-stakes poker for both teachers and students. Both of these problems can be solved, in my opinion, by creating tests that cover much more ground, spread more evenly over the year.
