I went to school in a day when the Iowa tests came around every few years (twice or three times between 1st and 10th grade), and that was it except for P?SAT and ACT. There was no test to teach to. It was not a golden age. It was an age of fads, just as our age is. That they came out of the teachers' colleges rather than federal mandates made them no more helpful. My brother suffered through more of the junk as being just enough younger. My stepmother eventually quit working as a substitute teacher because of her impatience with the continuing professional education courses she had to take.