"Virtually all of us sometimes need a push to study and do our best. Unfortunately, schools and teachers around the country have relaxed their standards for two main reasons: 1) To end the disparity between the best achieving students and the worst, 2) To be more popular. In other words, teachers want to be well-liked by their students and don't want the bottom part of the class to feel bad. Unfortunately, these relaxing of standards dissuades students from doing their best. If a student can do very little studying and still get an A, why would they try harder? Mandatory testing ensures that students are required to learn a minimum amount of material no matter who their teachers are and no matter which schools they go to. Mandatory testing also improves the accountability of schools. If an inordinate amount of students from a certain school are failing the tests, if gives the government an idea where it should concentrate its time and resources. We can find underfunded schools. We can also reward the best schools. Simply publishing the overall scores of certain schools would give parents an idea which schools are best. This would lead to competition, and we all know that competition is always better for the consumer, in this case the student."