I read the first half of that book before returning it, still the wait list still to check it out again. The problem is deeper than bad history textbooks from Texas, when then only intervention the state/district uses for schools with failing STAAR scores is indiscriminately firing administrators. My wife taught for a year at a school right on the edge of failing, with some of best admins she's worked for, but they had to quit every subject except reading and math in March to get ready for testing. Even the most sedated kid is gonna be antsy after a week of test prep but after a month the whole school was batshit crazy.
The solution is federal education standards and federal education funding. Period. Full stop. It's deeply irrational that we have federal highways, a federal bureau of investigation, a federal postal system, a federal engineering program and education? Is whatever Cletus thinks will keep his daughter from getting any librul ideas.
The problem isn't "teaching to the test" the problem is that to sell a textbook you have to find a buyer. The biggest buyers of textbooks are states -because whatever your textbook teaches, it has to pass a purity test before you get state funding to buy it. The southern states figured out that if they change out their textbooks a lot they get to influence what those textbooks say a lot. The biggest buyer is Texas. So in general, every textbook you find has been approved by the Texas Board of Education. Reactionary, racist, religious shitheels love being on the school board. They know it's how they win the culture war. In 10th grade all our science teachers had to stamp every biology book with a little paragraph about how evolution was a theory and how we were strongly encouraged to learn alternate explanations for the origins of man. Tests? Sure. Same reason. SAT and ACT most definitely been approved by the state board of education.
My gut instinct is that dropping standardized tests with no replacement would be a big improvement in maybe 2/3rds of districts, and public school opponents would burn everything to the ground and salt the earth wherever they could.
That was off topic but I was already mad about it