Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

In my opinion, standardized testing is most useful in a situation where a very limited number of tests are given as 'mile markers' in an educational path. A re-calibration of the scale.

No two students learn at the same pace, why force it?

I think you've somewhat missed the point, though I'm happy enough to play that game.

My question would be which adults need to know those things? You ask me, "Which students don't need to be able to compute 3 x (3/4)?" And I would be inclined to answer anyone who doesn't want to go into some field that uses a lot of mathematics; accountancy, physics, computer science, biology, et cetera et cetera. Outside of the education system, for a lot of people, that knowledge has no value. And it's the same with the questions upon angles, the questions about area... people who aren't going to be working in particularly quantitative professions do not need to know these things.

Your secretary does not need to know (taken from the sheets you posted) what an angle given by a line bisecting two parallel lines is. They don't need to know what 833,000 is written in scientific notation. They don't need to know what 2 over 3 to the power of four is, or which of the following: the square root of 144, the square root of 16, the square root of four, the square root of three - is an irrational number. They don't need to know what a 20% discount on a price of $37.50 is, it will be marked on what they want to buy. They do not need to know what has the same value as 5 to the power of 6 multiplied by 5 to the power of -2. Or what (jk)^-5(jk)^3 is. They do not need to know what the value of 4 to the square root of X is when X is 100. Or which graph shows that Y is equal to minus X squared.

These things all have a use, but they don't have a use to everyone. They don't have a use to nearly everyone. Most people do not work in a profession where that sort of maths is useful.

Your taxidriver does not need to be able to understand algebra, your secretary does not need to be able to understand geometry, your customer service representative does not need to be able to do calculus. And it is a waste of time, effort, money, and passion to try to teach them to do so if they are not interested.

I would suggest, in the place of general standardised tests, a system more similar to the badges given out for scouting: pass fail assessment of a particular skill, voluntary participation, fine-grained certification. You have kids in a school, and if they want to go for their level 1 geometry badge, or whatever, then you help them do so. You retain the absolute basics that everyone has to have in order to get by in society, like addition, multiplication, division. And everything else you take out into a much finer-grained system that vouches for specific skills.

That would allow both a better analysis of the sort of skills that are being promoted in particular areas by particular schools and it will allow children to pursue their aspirations rather than being shoehorned into a process that is not suitable for everybody and manages to say very little with respect to specific careers. People shouldn't end up shit-listed for life because they ended up studying a bunch of stuff they had no interest or passion for but which unfortunately, because of the way the system was set up, is the only way that their employer had to assess anything about their education.

Now that I see your argument more fully, it seems less like an argument against testing and more like an argument against wasting resources on unneeded education. Do you believe the people who don't need the specific topics you mention actually do need education beyond grade 6? If so, why?

Now, I'm a good test taker generally, and it has always helped me in life, and I will ensure my children know the rules of the game. But from the perspective of the country or planet, that's not time and effort well spent, it's a zero-sum arms-race that could have been better spent.

There's more to this, e.g. the fact that the tests are really testing the teachers (again very imperfectly), that some people want to privatize education and so on, but "teaching to the test" is a well known anti-pattern for good reasons, even though the individual incentives push us in that direction.

Sure, if you're an incompetent teacher. But then maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be teaching at all.