There is a growing movement in the U.S. to abandon high-stakes tests because they don’t work as anticipated and are costly. I agree, but hope that we don’t throw out the need for accountability along with the high-stakes bathwater. Before No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law, Audrey Amrein and I discussed the dangers of high-stakes testing. We found that high-stakes high school exit exams did not improve scores on other tests such as the SAT or NAEP tests, and contributed to higher drop out rates. We also described the corruption that invariably occurs when an indicator of any kind takes on too much value. Both the indicator (test scores, stock prices, return on investment) and those who work with it are frequently corrupted. The 1200+ years of the Chinese civil service exams, and final exams at all three US Military academies are high-stakes examinations. Yet cheating by candidates was common despite the penalties of death and dishonor associated with such cheating. When indictors take on undue value people too often engage in morally questionable or reprehensible activities. States, schools, and teachers act similarly when faced with high-stakes exit exams. Then came NCLB with mandatory high-stakes tests for all states and schools. With my colleagues Sharon Nichols and Gene Glass we showed that even though scores on state high-stakes tests were going up, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were not rising as expected. We also found that the pressure within each state for achievement was correlated zero with gains in NAEP reading and mathematics test scores. Thus we negated a basic premise of NCLB, namely, that if pressure were exerted so that teachers and students would work harder, achievement would rise. Then Sharon Nichols and I, in the book Collateral Damage, showed why NCLB is not working and why it cannot work. We documented how schools, under pressure to achieve, dump low performing children from the schools; or arrange for absences and suspensions on test da