Warren, Alney, back with To the Point. In Atlanta, 35 teachers and administrators were indicted this week for conspiring to raise student scores on standardized tests in El Paso, former superintendents in prison, for putting kids in the wrong grade, pushing others out of school and even preventing some from enrolling, so the test scores would meet high standards of accountability.

Texas spends more on standardized testing than any other state does.

It's where George W. Bush got the idea for no child left behind, which of course evolved into race to the top under Barack Obama.

Gail Fallon is president of the Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas. Ms. Fallon,

good to have you on our program.

Well, thank you for inviting me.

What is your conclusion? Teachers have been troubled by the imposition of standardized testing for a long, long time.

Right.

Tell us about...

What's memorable before the rest of the country was.

Yeah, but is there anything good about it?

What it has done in Houston is it's finally gotten the attention of parents who are saying,

wait a minute, you're not educating my child.

You're just teaching them to bubble in. And we are seeing an exodus of middle-income students,

along with an exodus of teachers who say, I'm sorry, this is not what I signed on to do.

So it's hard to find something good in it when it's abused as badly

as it has been in Texas. When you say abuse, what do you mean? Describe it in a little more

detail. Well, the test, because it's, well, in our district, it's linked to teacher evaluation,

and there's legislation right now in our

state capital to link it to all teachers evaluation but it's also linked to a school accountability

system which endangers a principal's job if they don't do well uh we have one curriculum in tex and that is the state accountability test. And we spend

months drilling children in how to pass this test, as opposed to teaching them subjects.

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