(disclaimer: somewhat tangential)
My friend is a 4th grade teacher in Texas, and she was just telling me how the school refused to fail a student whose own parents thought it would be best for him. Apparently if a particular student passes the standardized state test (it’s called the TACS here, I believe) and they fail the class, it reflects badly on the school, worse than if they had failed the test and the class, because if they fail both, okay, maybe they’re not that smart, but if they pass the test but not the class, the teacher must be doing something wrong. what actually happened in this case, according to my friend, is that the school teaches to the test, and it backfired in this case.
(another tangential story)
According to another one of my firiends, a chemistry professor failed 6 students in an upper level course last semester, and now the department is putting a lot of pressure on all the chemistry profs not to fail anyone, because when people fail they drop the major, and when that happens their funding shrinks.