I see few articles that show the reporters have looked carefully at what the test score's record is on the ability to predict. Very few test scores predict much, and the testing community knows that, but the public doesn't. So people have drifted into the view that a rigorous education is the same thing as a high test score. A high test score is one part of it, but it's only one part. We don't hear about the other parts, so we trivialize serious education as a result.
Tests tend to test how one individual performs on that kind of test.
In our school, we've learned that our kids do so much better on multiple choice than on free writing. The reason for that is ironic, because we emphasize writing a lot in these schools, but not formulaic writing. These tests call for answers in which you state a problem, then answer the question. So our kids, who are quite artful in their writing, score quite low on writing. So it's like taking a temperature in a hospital.