Michigan State University Professor and author Yong Zhao has just written a piece on the “causes of education corruption.”
I’d strongly recommend you read his entire post, but would like to specifically share a quote he uses from from social scientist Donald Campbell, who has developed an interesting concept called Campbell’s Law:
Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.
This might be something that, among others, Secretary Duncan and President Obama keep in mind.