I agree that teaching to tests is not an ideal way of teaching, however I DO believe that tests have their place.
We had a change in teaching/testing styles over here a while back (many many many moons ago.....) there have been others since of course but I was actually at the cusp of this "new" system as it were.
Back in those days we were taught the old fashioned way and had tests every Term (semester?) and a big one at the end of the year. If you didn't pass the year end test, you didn't move up to the next grade the following year.
In High School this situation continued, but at the end of your 3rd year there was a major testing period which led, if you passed to getting what was called the "Junior Certificate". Basically I suppose this was your
High School Graduation Certificate. You could then leave school, your age being about 15-16. If you stayed on there were 2 more years at High School leading to a "Senior Certificate" and if you wished to test for Uni you also
did a Matriculation Certificate which determined if and when you attended University and what courses would be open to you.
Soooo... my year group was the last to do things by that method. The classes behind me started a new system when they entered high school. This was called the "Achievement" Certificate course. Basically this involved teaching as usual and then when you had finished one part of a course, be it English, Maths, Science etc., you were immediately tested on THAT particular part of the subject...Ok nothing spectacularly different there however... You were NOT TESTED on it again...EVER!
In other words there was no general integration of the learning and no checks an balances to ensure that the overall subject knowledge was being retained. You learned a new "fact" and while it was still fresh in your mind you were tested to see if you knew the new "fact", then it was forgotten about by the system and probably the student.
Things came to a head when the first year of students taught under the new system reached the end of 3rd year High School. Although they had been taught under the new system, the TESTING for the Junior Certificate was still in place, meaning they had to do the Junior to graduate.
The cat was FIRMLY set among the pigeons!!!
I believe the marking procedure used (and this was a State Wide exam) was that they determined that on average about 75% of students would "pass". They then looked at all the marked scores, went down 75% of the marks and drew a line. Everyone above that line passed and everyone below failed. Usually this meant that a pass mark was roughly a 50% exam score. I think in my year it was about 55%, so you had to score 55% in the test to pass that subject. There were other higher marking levels for higher level passes... a "Distinction" in a subject always meant a score higher than 75% in that particular exam for example.
When the first lot of students taught under the Achievement Certificate system were examined under the old but still relevant Junior Certificate system it caused massive panic in the education system. I cannot remember the exact scoring results as it was so long ago, but I believe the "Pass" mark for that year was something like an exam result of 30%. I don't think ANYONE from my school got a "distinction" that year and State Wide they were far and few between.
The following year the results were similarly alarming but did they change the system.... YES... they DROPPED THE JUNIOR CERTIFICATE and all the exams associated with it. They instituted finally the ACTUAL Achievement Certificate to replace the Junior and continued the "teach-test-forget" method. This had a knock on effect when it came time for those students pursuing higher education had to Matriculate.............a VERY high proportion couldn't meet the standards required and a lot of Uni courses, particularly in the Science and Maths fields had a dramatic downturn in student numbers.
Talk about dumbing down a society.
That's when a lot more of the "Arts" classes began to appear. In the words of one Dave Lister of Red Dwarf fame when asked how he got into Arts College replied "The usual way, I failed my exams and applied. They snapped me up!"