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Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children.

I agree, but my goal was more to share what I've seen of the process than to judge it. I think folks here are percipient enough to make those judgments independently. On top of that, I've long been out of the field and am far too ignorant too suggest alternatives, and that's what we seem to need more than critiques.

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  I've long been out of the field

Speaking as someone that came out of high school a couple years ago and watched No Child Left Behind start taking effect, I've seen two different styles of test: one from the mid-90's, when it sounds like you were involved, and one from after No Child Left Behind. The NCLB tests today are utterly unlike the tests that your methods produced. Basically, instead of trying to rank students against each other, they began ranking every student against the same fixed hurdles. On top of that, they started testing once every year or two rather than once every four or five years, and question quality dropped precipitously as they just ran out of material. The changes were, to me, obvious, and the effects were disastrous. Null-value questions ("What shape is the end of a pencil? Cone, square, pyramid.", on a 7th-grade test), bad and wrong essays (as described in the OP), science questions that asked for rote memorization rather than actual understanding and thinking, and so on.

These observations, though amateur and unscientific, suggest a few solutions. Basically, go back to relative rankings, do a lot less testing, and start rewarding uniqueness. Teachers need to have time to actually teach outside hitting every checkbox on list for the end-of-the-year test. Teachers need to be able to teach to their own students, rather than to the lowest-common-denominator child in rural Alabama. Teachers need to be able to encourange and guide every student individually, developing artists, scientists, thinkers, and doers, rather than having to force every single child into the same standardized mold.

</rant>

Right, I was in the field from something like 1995-2001, so I was before the No Child Left Behind style of testing. And I've been nowhere near the field in my work since.

If I were to guess, the types of questions you received were different, but the general process of how the tests were made remained the same. And that's the bureaucratic, lowest-common denominator mentality that pervades broadly given tests. And I agree with you that "[t]eachers need to be able to teach to their own students." I think that was a big part of the OP's point since that's something she does.

It's all part of the conundrum: Everyone wants good teachers and accountability in education, but there doesn't appear to be a high-level way of making such assessments that can pass the necessary political muster.

(I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing hyphen.)

...lowest-common denominator mentality...

After reading your initial comment, I couldn't help noticing that you might have meant "lowest-common-denominator mentality." Consider this pedantism a subtle way of saying, "I read your comment completely; thanks for posting it."

NaOH is applying one of the standard forms of hyphenation: many styles dislike joining phrases used as attributives with many hyphens.

If we are being pedantic: it should be "greatest common denominator".

I meant it when I thanked you for the comment. It was a fascinating insight into how these tests actually come about. Thanks for writing it!