Report slams heavy focus on school testing

according to a new report from the National Research Council.

“Incentive programs” in the decade-old No Child Left Behind law — with school districts being rewarded or punished based on standardized test scores — have improved student performance in key subject areas by less than 1 percentage point when using benchmarks set by the National Assessment of Education Progress, an arm of the Education Department.

Assessments designed to both measure student achievement and determine school funding levels simply don’t work, the report’s authors argued.