The fundamental problem imho is that standardized tests, which start out as well-intended, start to replace actual skills as a focus of interest. This is especi

The fundamental problem imho is that standardized tests, which start out as well-intended, start to replace actual skills as a focus of interest. This is especially problematic when the tests are only correlated 0.1-0.4 with whatever is actually of interest. The tail starts to wag the dog. One common example of this is in policy discussions about the tests, where figures tend to only present means, with no variances or scatterplots. I remember this, for instance, from a report at Dartmouth not too long ago arguing for the use of standardized tests, where the authors only presented means, and not the huge variances around them which is really the heart of the issue. It starts to become especially problematic when people get canalized into lifetime paths based on essentially invalid measures, especially when the targets themselves are changeable. "Meritocracy" starts to become sort of a misnomer at that point. Of course, relying on anything too heavily starts to be an issue, and tests are a source of information. But when you start to overrely on anything, or rely on it to an extent that is empirically unwarranted, you start to have problems institutionally and societally.