Now, what Larry Page and Sergy Brin both do have in common... is parents who are part of the intelligentsia... the Professoriate, at any rate. Clearly growing up in an environment that values education and provides appropriate opportunities (not limited by formal schooling and/or age) seems to be an important factor; this is also something that Bill Gates seems to have been raised with.
You wrote exactly what I had in mind, but I wrote it poorly above.
It's not at all clear that we'd have MORE people like them if only we offered more standardized testing, however.
You get people like Sergey's parents coming to America as long as America remains a land of opportunity for immigrants. Standardized testing has no positive or negative effect on that.
Does standardized testing improve education for students in the US? Not by itself, but a well constructed test can measure how well someone has learned the material being tested. Measurement is highly useful, as it can provide insight about what is working and not working. In that sense, I think standardized tests are just as useful in great education systems as they are in ones that need improvement.
