The National Research Council publishes a large number of books. They make them available free on the Web. Here is a recent example:

Michael Hout and Stuart W. Elliott, Editors (2011). Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education.  Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Public Education; National Research Council. Retrieved 6/30/2011 from http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12521#toc.

Here is a brief summary of the 150-page book:

In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better.

Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Notice the “test-based incentives” phrase used above. I find that confusing.  The book views tests and scoring well on tests to be an incentive. Hmm.

Here is a (quoted) summary of conclusions from the study:

1.      When evaluated using relevant low-stakes tests, which are less likely to be inflated by the incentives themselves, the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number of the programs. … School level incentives like those of NCLB produce some of the larger estimates of achievement effects, with an effect size around 0.08 standard deviations, but the measured effects to date tend to be concentrated in elementary grade mathematics and the effects are small compared to the improvements the nation hopes to achieve.

2.      The evidence we have reviewed suggests that high school exit exam programs, as currently implemented in the United States, decrease the rate of high school graduation without increasing achievement. The best available estimate suggests a decrease of 2 percentage points when averaged over the population. [Bold added for emphasis.]

My interpretation of these findings is that we may well be doing more harm than good in our testing/accountability approach to improving education. This approach has led to significant increased emphasis on reading and math—at the cost of a decrease in emphasis on the arts and social sciences. It has led to an increase in teaching to the tests. It has not produced the educational gains that are being sought.