When I see people argue "You can't measure the learning that's going on" I have to disagree. It's only based on my personal experience, but in undergrad I didn't see a lot of learning going on. My (large public Midwestern) school had CS and math majors that studied and learned. But there were a lot of people in other majors doing just enough to graduate. And professors didn't require much. I don't know if it's 10%, 20% or 30% that learned, but it wasn't 50%.

I see this in NYC. The mayor's belief is that we are doing a little too much testing, and closing too many schools. Their reaction to bad schools is "We just might not be measuring the learning." In this case, they seem to be doing an accurate job of measuring the bullying at least.