I'm too long retired to be able to make an informed, up-to-date comment on this representation of schooling under NAPLAN but I can still spot a classic red herring when I see one being lugged in. Saying that "The tests themselves don’t teach" is as pertinent as other point-missing aphorisms like "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (The Model T Ford was not actually broke but every time I drive my comfortable car I'm glad they "fixed" it!) and "Paths are made by walking" (especially if you are talking about goats and sheep).

Tests that don't teach are culpable to the same extent as brain scans that don't cure tumors and road maps that don't actually transport you to where you want to go. So let's abolish all tests, all medical diagnostic procedures and all navigational aids.

A concern not mentioned here is the implication of the test fetish in senior government appointments in education. The head of our national curriculum authority as well as the head of our chief educational research institute have their main qualification, expertise and experience in testing. ACER relies heavily on selling tests just to exist. Yet these people are expected to give unbiased advice on the merits of testing.

No matter how smart or intelligent people are, if they're without an ounce of wisdom they're merely a costly burden.
Just look at the ALP & the Greens.

“Australia will do what the emperor wants....unless parents say something about it.”

Phil Cullen,

What the majority of parents had to say they said when they gave their Vote to politicians, unconditionally.

The few ones who really love their children do not pack them into a uniform, and deliver them to a mustering yard for the best part of the day to be formed, indoctrinated, by people at the sold of either State of Church.

It is this nightmare that Ivan Illich wanted to avoid when he wrote ‘Deschooling Society’.

The careful parent finds the way of bypassing the ‘compulsory’ in the law, by taking advantage of a provision allowing independent parental schools.

Thanks GlenC for your sententious references to smelly fish, medicine and mechanics that you made about one short gnome. I do hope that a spelling error did not add to the distraction from the context, as well. The treatment of school pupils is a socio-political issue that has nothing to do with fishing. It needs more serious consideraton.
Brian Cambourne draws our attention to Campbell's Law and quotes from Berliner and Nichols :" Campbell's law stipulates that 'the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruptive influences and the more apt it will be to distort the social processes associated it was intended to monitor. Campbell warned us of the inevitable problems associated with undue weight and emphasis on a single indicator for monitoring complex social phenomena.In effect, he warned us about the high-stakes testing program that is part and parclel of NCLB." [= NAPLAN]

Cambourne suggests that Campbell's Law is "high stakes testing's kryptonite". I do hope that it kicks in soon, don't you?

Education Departments in western democracies today appear to be infested with long haired men and short haired women who have adopted the rather odd idea, that children should never compete with one another intellectually, or be tested upon how much they have learned, or be graded according to their intellects and capacity for hard work.

This is Socialism doing everything it can to make certain that its holy writ that 'all are equal" is not proven wrong by hard statistics. But somewhere down the line of every child's development, there has to be a point where employers and educators can assess that young person's intellect, drive, and personality.

This is why here in NSW, the Higher School Certificate is not wholly recognised by Universities as indicating suitability for higher education, and some universities and faculties are setting their own exams to weed out those who had never ben properly assessed by the examinations carried out by the NSW education department. Prior to this happening, some universities were being lumbered with students who may have been well educated with Socialist social theory, and who may have been environmentally aware, they just could not read, write, spell, or do bloody sums.

The biggest problem with the Socialist teaching model is parents. Most parents really want to know just how well their children are doing and they are not satisfied with report cards which are clearly designed to conceal whether their children are doing well or not.

Educators had better get it through theirn heads that they are public servants, who's job it is to serve the public. They are not there to dicatate to parents about how their children should be educated. Nor should they use their position to try and create a new Aquarian Age by claiming that the testing and grading of children is contrary to their Alice in Wonderland worldview