Yeah, it becomes a test of whether you can figure out what the testers are asking rather than a test to show understanding or mastery of certain material.
I wonder if that's why my DD didn't score at advanced in language arts on her state testing last year...
I remember one of her in-class tests had an ambiguous question on it. It was a comprehension question about a short story they had read. It asked why one character had started talking to another character. Well, my DD interpreted this quite literally and described the beginning of the story where the two characters first met. But the answer the teacher wanted was about how the characters started speaking to each other again after a disagreement.
