I have to agree with both of you.
There are so many underlying aspects to the reasons why assesment tests aren't reliable, accurate, or worth it.
DeltAlum brings up good points in not teaching to pass the test...I know from my own experience after about 7th grade assesment tests were brought up as an afterthought. The teachers basically took the attitude that this was taking up their class time that they could have spent teaching other things. Never did they make it out to be a big deal...and I think that a lot of people ended up not taking them seriously b/c the teachers weren't. That probably hurt scores...does that mean that my 8th grade history teacher was a horrible history teacher...absolutely not. Same thing for my Junior AP English Teacher who is in the top three teachers ever for anyone who ever had him. Did he really care about our State Writing assesments? NOT AT ALL. He would much rather had us continue our discussion of The Great Gatsby, then have to spend a week helping us prepare essays over the most ludicrous topics that had no relevance to anything we were doing in class.
With my own experience, and I bet that Delt could ask his own children, I think that most of the better schools don't place any importance on the tests. The reverse of this is that the poorer schools put too much emphasis on the tests. Teaching to the test doesn't help any of those kids in the long run.
Obviously there are tons of economic factors/school funding/inability to get qualified teachers/academic tracking issues that I could go on about (I like being a Sociology major!) but I have a Chemistry final in 3.5 hours!
In conclusion "Assesment tests bad, and so is 'Dubya'
"