Reply #5: We know why this happens.

[Laelth]

It's no mystery. Politicians who want to look tough and say they're actually doing something about these problems push for more testing of students and more accountability from teachers. As a result, teachers teach students how to pass these tests and ignore other important educational objectives. In addition, teachers are strongly encouraged pass students who should be held back because holding students back is supposedly an indication of "failure" that might mean a decrease in state funding for the school.

There's no easy solution to this problem. It would help if we could get rid of all the standardized testing and allow teachers to fail students without hurting either themselves or their school. Of course, increasing the funding to pay for better teachers and infrastructure might help too, but this is the expensive option, and politicians tend to prefer the cheap option--more and more testing and less teaching.

-Laelth