NAPLAN-style testing and reporting has failed in the United States by narrowing the curriculum and corrupting education standards, says a chief education adviser to the US President, Barack Obama.
Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University, who headed Mr Obama's education policy transition team, said the US had learnt important lessons from the No Child Left Behind education reforms which president George Bush introduced a decade ago.
The reforms included mandatory national standardised testing each year - similar to Australia's NAPLAN. The US tests have been criticised for narrowing the curriculum to reading and maths and multiple-choice formats.
''We have learnt about the potential negative effects of very narrow tests, particularly when they are put in a high-stakes context,'' Professor Darling-Hammond said.
Schools and individual teachers have been judged and rewarded financially for improving student test scores and punished for poor ones. This led to many of the best teachers abandoning schools in the disadvantaged areas, with some teachers accused of teaching to the test and others of helping children cheat to improve results.
"We have seen growing student exclusion to get the scores up. Schools either prevent students from taking the test or encourage them to leave school," she said.
"Schools that have choices about who to admit will not admit low-achieving students because they will bring their scores down.''
"It doesn't serve society to say we got our scores up but didn't educate lots of children. At the end of the day, it hurts the economy."
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