Here’s the problem: All across America, school districts have been working furiously to bring up their test scores, running like desperate hamsters trapped in endlessly rotating wheels. Because we are running so fast, not nearly enough teachers and administrators on America’s school-improvement teams — or regular folk across the nation, for that matter — are asking critical questions: To what extent are the tests themselves and the scores themselves creating our problems? To what extent are the test-associated curricula themselves and increasingly difficult standards that create these curricula themselves creating our problems? To what extent are the tests and curricula themselves forcing the purchase of inappropriate materials? To what extent are those Common Core-adapted books themselves adding to our problems?

No one asks whether raising test scores is the best or right strategy. We are told higher test scores are necessary to prepare students for college. We are told all students must be made college-ready.

What if we are wrong?