[neilcrj]

The tests the teacher is criticizing are standardized summative assessments used to rank, reward and punish students, teachers or both. These usually fail to provide any detailed feedback of instructional value, and frequently aren't even scored until students have advanced to the next grade. How do you use an SAT score to diagnose and then help Johnny with his conceptual misunderstanding of the relationship between exponents and logarithms? It is the wrong tool for the job.

On the other hand, TDD is formative testing: You iterate over the code until all the tests pass in a structured way. You don't fire programmers for writing code that doesn't pass all the tests on the first attempt, but deliver actionable feedback at every step. That kind of testing is massively useful in the classroom and teachers practice it with formal and informal assessments all the time.