The Network for Public Education has a terrific blog, curated by the wonderful Peter Greene. I urge you to subscribe. It’s free.
Here is one of its latest hits:
Gregory Sampson: LOL, We Already Knew It
Blogging at Grumpy Old Teacher, Gregory Sampson relates the tale of a district employee who dared to ask why instructional days are being lost for three different tests that all do the same thing. It was a bold move. And it drew an answer.
In essence, the teacher was told that the state did not report data (test results) by benchmark and the district did not allow teachers to review questions with students and analyze why students chose wrong answers; therefore, a third test was needed so teachers could look at the questions, go over them with students, and look at what wrong answer was most often chosen and why it was wrong.
Reread that paragraph carefully. Ha, ha, ha, did a district employee just admit what we always knew?! That state and district tests have little value for the classroom teacher. Their tests tell us nothing except that our schools no longer focus on what students need. It’s about the data. Students are nothing more than dogs running around a track for the bettors and the house who sets the odds so that it always wins.
Once the greyhound no longer can place reliably, the racing/betting industry has no more use for them and is ready to dump them into the street.
We always had a strong intuition that state and district tests were useless, but we never expected someone to admit it.
You can read the full story here.
You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/gregory-sampson-lol-we-already-knew-it/
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a special education teacher, I have always questioned the point of students reading at a 2.3 level being given a 6th grade reading test. What do I learn? They are behind, several recent immigrants. Such a waste.
Ah, but the state tests do serve a purpose: Assigning blame (aka “accountability”) and for some a phony justification to undermine public education in order to promote the privatization most folks don’t want.
Why choose useless tests? Other standardized tests have quick turnaround time w error matrices- the most common incorrect answers and teachers can adjust lesson plans, hopefully collaboratively… performance tasks in lieu of standardized tests fail the inter rater reliability “test”
Ah, but the tests do serve a purpose.
A “rite of passage” step in
becoming an “as-if” in-charge,
ethnographer. While the methods
used, vary across a range
of different disciplines,
the interests being
served remain, as do
the “masks” veneering the
process.
Taste the pudding,
then with a straight
face, tell who you
are working for…
It’s worse than dumping them in the street:
“Every year, thousands of young and healthy Greyhound dogs are killed merely because they lack winning potential, were injured while racing or are no longer competitive”
https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/greyhound-racing
And thanks to the Republican party, many children living in poverty were dumped in the streets the moment they were born. Republicans don’t wait for those children to do poorly on useless tests that only benefits (profits) the company that produces them.
I worked for Measured Progress as a consultant standardized test (item) writer for five years. I was trained in standards of the profession, and it proved to be an invaluable experience as a classroom teacher.
The truth of the matter is that a standardized test cannot be any better than the standards that are used to write and develop each item. I wrote science items for over a dozen different state and one state consortium (grouping).
An assigned set of standards is provided to the item writer, and each test item (not called questions) is written to assess a specific standard. As a writer, I quickly learned that a clear, concise, age appropriate, and objective standard, made all difference in the world when it came to producing a fair and reasonable test item. The real nightmare job was trying to write the same for a poorly written, confusing, or even inaccurate standard.
So, when you criticize any test, the blame should really be falling on the people who wrote the standards that produced an unfair, age inappropriate or confusing test. The exemplars for this idea, are the Common Core tests in ELA. The most glaring problem is the requirement for the test writers to produce objective MC items for subjective standards. The file of CC standards in ELA sent to a testing company should have been labeled, Mission Impossible. Another common complaint about CC tests were that they were age inappropriate. Of course the they were! Just go look at the CC standards. The CC tests were also considered confusing. Yes, they were! You could expect nothing more from vague, subjective, and poorly written standards.
So please stop blaming the tests (i.e. test writers/developers). And if test we must (Blame the ESSA), then let’s put all our energy into calling for clear, concise, age appropriate, objective, properly written standards. And if they ever come to be, no one will complain about the tests.
If you want to see a a more recent exemplar for absolutely abysmal standards, look no further than the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The NGSS assessments arrive this spring in every public school in New York. How will you know the standards are so bad? Just listen to the complaints about the tests and the significantly lower test scores they produce.
“Students are nothing more than dogs running around a track for the bettors and the house who sets the odds so that it always wins.” Now that is a precise analogy.