There is nothing wrong with developing a curriculum to achieve learning goals. However, schools and teachers should be allowed flexibility on how they spend their time and effort to achieve those teaching goals. The way classroom time is organized in many schools precludes the teachers having the ability to organize their classes.
Having students memorize answers to standardized tests guarantees that ten minutes after the test is completed, most of the students will have forgotten most of what they had "learned". I speak from experience as I taught middle school and high school over a two year period.
Most of my jobs were spent working in technical fields in electronics and computer programming. In several of the jobs, I worked with engineers. Some of them were brilliant, some of them should have gone into nontechnical work (I wouldn't be surprised if they did well on their tests since they got hired), and the majority were, as in many other fields, at various levels of mediocrity. Testing doesn't necessarily prove quality.
The "one size fits all" regurgitation of "facts" (which may not even be "factual"
does not guarantee understanding or the ability to do anything useful.
I am critical of many facets of education in the U.S. No Child Left Behind and its ilk are never going to solve the problems. They are just obfuscation that makes matters worse.
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