All that testing isn't working

In a report which appears to have been widely ignored (I'm turning up reports in the Washington Times and HuffPo), the entire basis of the current American educational system has been called into question.
Valerie Strauss summarizes:

A 17-member Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability convened by the National Research Council...examined over the past decade 15 incentive programs, which are designed to link rewards or sanctions for schools, students and teachers to students’ test results. The programs studied included high-school exit exams and those that give teachers incentives (such as bonus pay) for improved test scores.
The panel studied the effects of incentives, not by tracking changes in scores on high-stakes tests connected to incentive programs, but by looking at the results of “low-stakes” tests, such as the well-regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress, which aren’t linked to the incentives and are taken by the same cohorts of students.
The researchers concluded that the effects of incentive programs tend to be “small and . . . effectively zero for a number” of such programs.

(emphasis added)
Note that this report explicitly includes No Child Left Behind, but also includes programs that are now reflected in Race to the Top policies.
The researchers further concluded that such policies not only do not improve students' education, they also give us a false view of how students are doing.
The entire report is online at the link. Share it!