Testing is not the way to Improve Education

It's absolutely remarkable watching the British Government's current attempts to destroy on of the best education systems in the world. Having already backed down on their lunatic plans to turn every school in the country into an "Academy", they now have come out with a standardized reading tests that appears to have the potential to destroy every student's self confidence according to this TES article  The  incredible pressure put on young children through this relentless regime of testing by a government that has minimal educational expertise  outlined in this BBC article is  absolutely staggering.  There was even a protest by parents who kept their children home for the day because of the testing. And all the time the British Government is clamoring for more and more rigor Finland lets children play more and still outscores the UK in global tests.  In fact there are so many articles on the dissatisfaction of the over-testing of children and other government mismanagement of education issues in the UK that there is almost an entire BBC webpage devoted to articles about it.

  Thankfully in many States such as New York the "Opt-out" movement  is growing as people come to realize there is little benefit to children from constantly testing them. Assess, yes, test, no.

So why do Governments feel the need to test so much. In he case of the UK there is a terrible lack of trust of teachers on the part of the national government. They see education as "economic investment" and global competition first as opposed to helping children become the best they can be by whatever yardstick success as a human is measured. This is an incredibly complex issue, of course, but you simply cannot raise standards by raising the difficulty level of tests.