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One reason to use standardized testing is to get valuable feedback on how students are doing, which areas they are weak, where they are strong, which teachers are doing well, which schools, etc.

As it is, it doesn't seem like the testing is being used effectively in this way. In your opinion, what is the best way to evaluate progress and performance in education?

When I tutored college math, I remember helping students through things like solving cubic equations by hand, finding inverse matrices, and other topics of questionable usefulness. Are there topics that you have to teach that you feel are wasteful? How do you handle the question, "when am I ever going to use this?" particularly for those who are not interested in a math or science based career.

Can I take the fact that rationalizing is still part of the curriculum as evidence that math education is having a difficult time staying current?

follow up question:

I am not very close to the situation, but I was told by one of my undergraduate professors that the workload in one of his kid's junior high math class was so bad that many parents had purchased the solutions manual to the book to spare them 2-3 hours of nightly work (possible exaggerated. This is what I was told). He said that his school was ruining math and science for his daughter, who was previously home-schooled by her parents.

I chose a math based career, despite failing 2 semesters of math in high school. The tedious and often wasteful workload of high school math was really difficult for me.

This seems to be a fairly common problem, at least in Utah/Idaho. Do you also get complaints that you feel are legitimate about excess homework? (not the usual student whining of course) How do you manage student workload in your classes? How does standardized curriculum affect how many problems you assign?