Although times change, today’s schools are still deluged with tests. Perhaps the tests are not the kind of continuous ‘micro’ inspections that were part of

the mastery learning curriculum movement of the 1960s, such as the Wisconsin Design, Fountain Valley, or other versions of skills-based management systems. Rather, current testing programmes seem to be of the ‘high-stakes’ variety, often with dramatic consequences for individual students (e.g. promotion, graduation), for teachers (e.g. salaries, reward, career advancement), for schools (e.g. resource allocations, administrative reassignments), and for districts (e.g. accreditation, status, rewards). Over the last two decades, approximately 80 per cent of the states in the USA have implemented largescale assessment plans, in addition to any local level testing requirements.