Why do parents believe standardized tests tell them anything about their children?

Standardized Achievement Tests are inappropriate measures to use for making judgments about students, teachers, and schools because:

Children are being punished for a reward.  See "Punished By Rewards", by Alfie Kohn.

A small sample of the curriculum is used to make a judgment about a child's progress.

Inadequate sample of the content is being tested.

The test is an inadequate time of observing a student's learning. 

It is an indirect observation as opposed to a direct observation of a student's learning.

Test scores require inferences that lead to questionable conclusions about children and have a lasting impact.

Comparing children with each other produces competitiveness and winners and losers.

Tests are normed with a population no one knows anything about. 

The standardized achievement tests cannot be used as diagnostic tools.

The test is designed so that 50% of students fall below the mean.

Standardized tests serve only to sort and select our children.