What would happen if schools refused standardised testing? No legislature can close down every single school country wide if they refuse to do testing and stick to these "requirements".
I think that overall the amount of standardized testing (here in Massachusetts, two mornings each for math and English) is not excessive and that testing does more good than harm. Education is a field where you can mislead the "client" and his or her family for a long time. You can tell all parents that their children are doing great (because their schools are great). Their failures in college and at work are far in the future. With test scores, there are hard numbers stating your child and your school is in percentile X in math and English for all students in the state. Life is more pleasant if your results are never measured, and that is a reason educators gripe about standardized tests.
I do think that differences in average IQ explain more of the inter-school variation in test scores than the quality of education does, but students and their families should be getting objective information about where they stand.
