An easy suggestion — all forms of high-stakes testing should be resisted at elementary and middle school. If testing used for any purpose other to diagnose students’ learning needs and provide feedback, it does everyone (but policymakers and test prep companues) a disservice.

We must also recognise that the richest forms of mathematical thinking are, almost by design, holistic and beyond the blunt measuring tools of written assessment. The evaluation of these deeper forms of thinking is best left to us humans — it needs to be a staple part of teacher training, for one thing.