> Polling is another form of standardized testing (unless you propose asking different questions of each participant).
No, it's not. Polling is an analysis of a large population through sampling. Standardized testing, in the context we're talking about, is an evaluation of performance based on the performance of a different group.
> It seems you don't object to standardized testing at all, but merely to the goals of the current school system
Here's the funny part. The goals are expressed through the school system. The kind of reform I'd like to see (read: infeasible in the short-term, at least) involve societal upheaval. I can talk about it, as long as you recognize that I've been working for the past few months on trying to figure out a good way of capturing my thoughts and have yet to succeed to my satisfaction.
I can't speak for wpietri, but my opposition to standardized testing is multifarious. For instance, I've experienced its detrimental effects on education firsthand. (In high school, there were a number of interesting topics that we had no time to cover because it was more important to teach to the test. My desire for education reform was born right there.) For the same reason, I dislike grading and GPAs and such. I don't consider this opposition very important, though, because I think we're teaching the wrong things to begin with.
> conveying knowledge/skills
The decision of which pieces of knowledge and which skills to focus on is a political decision and a form of indoctrination. Otherwise, you're not actually conveying anything so much as facilitating the ability to discover/develop knowledge/skills.