I disagree. I've gone through a public school system, where all students in the entire state sat for a series of closed book examinations that lasted over a 2 week period. The students are then judged by how they did amongst their peers in the entire state. They were no multiple choice questions. You either knew the subject matter or not. The higher school certificate examination (also used as the university entrance exam) took 2 years to prepare. This is not a case of quick rapid memorization to take a test to forget it an hour later. You had to demonstrate that you knew your stuff. But then, so did everybody else.
Standard tests should be that - a marker to see how everyone does. I'm convinced that the homeschoolers will out do the state school kids every time.