Why quote Walter Lippmann on the subject? He's as much an authority
on the question of standardized testing as James Watson.

Look, some people, for whatever reason, have a distaste for
standardized testing.

Sometimes it's because of legitimate defects in the testing,
though concerted effort as bias-elimination over the last several
decades have made that argument less and less valid.

Sometimes it's because the test results have been employed by
intellectually dishonest people for nefarious rhetorical purposes.

Sometimes it's because the tests tell them what they don't want
to hear, and the only way to keep denying what they don't want
to here is to declare that the test, or more conveniently, all
such tests must be inherently flawed. They can do this while ignoring
all the scientific data to the contrary, and fill up loads of column
inches in doing so.