That's an argument against ranking students in a way which can potentially determine their entire lives, not an argument against standardized testing. The alte

That's an argument against ranking students in a way which can potentially determine their entire lives, not an argument against standardized testing. The alternative to standardized testing is GPA which is an extremely subjective metric masquerading as some objective datapoint. Kids from different schools don't even have the same curricula let alone the same grading standards. Also the teachers have a vested interest in giving the highest grades they can to as many students as they can without making it obvious that they aren't actually grading them fairly. i don't mean this as an accusation against anybody or some sort of insult against teachers as a whole, I merely mean to point out that this is what they are incentized to do by virtue of the fact that they are indirectly grading themselves by grading their students.