Massive testing systems show no positive change to system

Almost a decade after NCLB sent the testing industry skyrocking and put real education across American at risk, a blue ribbon committee at the National Academy of Sciences has found:

little to no positive effect overall on learning and insufficient safeguards against gaming the system

(all quotes here from EdWeek, as the research report is not posted online)
Further:

  On the whole, the panel found the accountability programs often used assessments too narrow to accurately measure progress on program goals and used rewards or sanctions not directly tied to the people whose behavior the programs wanted to change. Moreover, the programs often had insufficient safeguards and monitoring to prevent students or staff from simply gaming the system to produce high test scores disconnected from the learning the tests were meant to inspire.

Tests not related to concerns? Check. Testing to the test? Check?
And in fact:

...the report found that, rather than leading to higher academic achievement, high school exit exams so far have decreased high school graduation rates nationwide by an average of about 2 percentage points.

Yes, the graduation rate has been going DOWN since NCLB.
Recommendations?

“We need to look seriously at the costs and benefits of these programs,” said Daniel M. Koretz, a committee member and an education professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Mass. “We have put a lot into these programs over a period of many years, and the positive effects when we can find them have been pretty disappointing.”