Ace.

Are you fucking kidding me?

This is totes batshit insane.

It is insane, but it's really just an overt invocation of the subtext of No Child Left Behind, which many teachers believe forces schools to educate to the test. Many schools literally take time out from other studies to prepare students for the annual tests.

And if you don't pass enough students, your school gets "reconstituted" (or equivalent terminology), i.e. abolished and restaffed from the ground up as if it were a new school.

You will be happy to know that at least one teacher in the world (at a private language school in Latvia, but still):

- has the ability to fail every single one of his students if he so chooses
- has a clear set of goals students should be meeting by the end of the year to progress to the next level, and can put students in a "holding level" for the next year to improve in case students need that
- has the resources available to ask for and receive help with tough students
- has over 30 other extremely qualified, highly trained teachers and staff members who he trusts to discuss issues

All of these are reasons why I left the US to start my teaching career, because I know that some or perhaps all of them wouldn't be possible in most schools in most places in the US. I can't imagine deciding who in the 50% of my students who had enough trouble to fail would just be passed on to the next teacher to deal with instead of holding them back - do you pick the more articulate ones, the ones who are successful in other subjects, who? I have to respect everyone out there teaching in the States; it's not a choice I'd make for myself, at least not right now.

Many schools literally design the whole cirriculum and ignore other studies to prepare students for the annual tests.

That is kind of what the Texas cirriculum does. Each lesson plan has to be linked to its approproprate TAKS test objective.

My wife teaches to that cirriculum, but does so in a way that things like teaching good study skills and remediating students who are behind are linked to TAKS objectives. She also has a supportive principal who has a reputation for turning around troubled schools; she understands what my wife is doing and letting her run with it. My wife failed a great deal of her Advanced Placement students because they aren't doing work that will get them a passing grade on the AP test.

I'm not sure teaching to the AP test is a bad thing. The TAKS is a steaming pile of somethingsomething though.