In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed.
Bring something like this to England, please!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/...
The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.
(it's not clear to me if this created any standardized tests for students, or just depended on existing ones)
Sounds like it ran from 2009-2015ish. If Bill Gates is going to be brought up, then I guess George W. Bush should be, too, with No Child Left Behind. AFAIK that's what kicked off the trend of standardized testing for students in the U.S.