The fact that it is impossible to fire bad teachers does not really prove tests do not produce some positive effects on these teachers, forcing them to at least teach something to the test, instead of teaching nothing at all. Again, you seem to be comparing "how teachers would teach if they had no tests and were excellent teachers" to "how teachers have to teach with tests". However, the sad reality is the excellent teachers are rare, and without tests nothing prevents a teacher from spending a year of math class discussing how they students feel when they look at numbers and why math is inherently sexist, while teaching no actual math at all.
It is long known that throwing money at a problem is not solving the problem of poor performance of schools. Poorly performing schools spend the same money per pupil as best private schools and still remain poorly performing. The solution, if it exists, appears to be more complex than pouring more money into it. Maybe solving the problem with the unions is a part of it.
>>>> I do, in fact, believe that we'd be better off with no tests than with what we currently have.
Could you explain why? I.e. if we now abolished all testing, how the situation would improve in average case?
> without tests nothing prevents a teacher from spending a year of math class discussing how they students feel when they look at numbers and why math is inherently sexist
Tests with no consequences don't prevent a teacher from doing so, either. My experience (and that of teachers I know) is that bad teachers don't particularly care how the tests turn out, since there aren't direct consequences, while good teachers do care and adjust accordingly. This comes about because bad teaching correlates (unsurprisingly) with not caring how the school as a whole looks compared to other schools.
> Could you explain why?
If we abolished tests, bad teachers would continue doing what they do now and what they did before testing, while good teachers would stop spending all their time teaching how to memorize facts and take multiple choice tests, and leave time for teaching how to think.
It is long known that throwing money at a problem is not solving the problem of poor performance of schools. Poorly performing schools spend the same money per pupil as best private schools and still remain poorly performing. The solution, if it exists, appears to be more complex than pouring more money into it. Maybe solving the problem with the unions is a part of it.
>>>> I do, in fact, believe that we'd be better off with no tests than with what we currently have.
Could you explain why? I.e. if we now abolished all testing, how the situation would improve in average case?