My experience in the late 80s and early 90s matches your own, except I got the impression that poor teachers did teach to the test extensively. I didn't get that impression from good teachers; they just seemed like good teachers. Looking back, I hypothesize that merely competent school administrators used standardized tests to identify problems, while smart administrators identified problems with the tests but then didn't actually cite the tests when dealing with those problems. Because after you've put a few losers on performance plans and blamed their test results when they asked why, the other losers in your school might catch on. (This seems to imply that administrators at schools I attended were merely competent, which implication I cannot contradict.)
If such a dynamic did exist, one could predict it would take hold on a national level with the advent of NCLB. Then one would expect that NCLB had the effect primarily of making standardized tests less accurate...
If such a dynamic did exist, one could predict it would take hold on a national level with the advent of NCLB. Then one would expect that NCLB had the effect primarily of making standardized tests less accurate...