Reddit mentions of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us

> It is truly an epic fail

I agree with you there about NCLB. Similarly, state level efforts at test based accountability are also largely failing. Besides NCLB, many states have HS graduation tests which have increased drop-out rates and done nothing to improve achievement or improve learning.

However, your comment here doesn't seem to jibe with your prior comment, "There is nothing wrong using exam as end all measure of students intellectual capability as long as exams are genuinely difficult."

This article is in fact arguing quite strongly against using tests as an "end all measure" since such tests, however carefully designed, can only tell us a very modest amount of what students learn. Moreover, we're learned that attaching high-stakes to such tests, no matter how carefully designed, corrupts learning. Moreover, there's no evidence that the difficulty of an exam has any bearing on how useful the exam is. Tests are a measuring device and need to be designed for particular purposes. They all have limitations and should never be used as the "end all measure". I strongly encourage you to read Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us or The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don't Tell You What You Think They Do.