The thing you are blatantly ignoring is this: standardized tests also teach children the lesson that there will be exactly one correct answer in all of life's situations, and that there will be exactly one OK method for every possible challenge faced. No exceptions.
Which is sometimes true sure. But it is frustrating working with academic "stars" who internalize this once they come to the "real world". They are focused so much on getting the "right answer" within some narrowly defined context of right, that they can't see the better solution by reinterpreting the problem or recasting the assumptions in a slightly different order. They are unable to combine bits of knowledge from different buckets, because the test questions are all neatly siloed.
For example, I've had this argument with fresh grads many, many times:
me: you need to limit your UDP packets to 512 bytes (or 8K depending on the situation).
them: but my teachers told me UDP packet size is a 16 bit integer.
me: yeah, but many stacks cut off shorter, because there is a different standard that says routers can drop packets bigger than their preferred size, the only minimum is 512 bytes.
them: my teacher told me that the packet size is a 16 bit field. Why are you talking about routers?
me: because you need to combine information to actually solve a problem?
them: whatever, I need to figure out what the bug in my code is causing these packets to be dropped.
Or -
me: hey $intern, let's figure out a few ways to solve approach this problem. expounds on the problem, lays out a few things that might work. The goal here is to try a few different techniques so we can work them into the bigger design. Any questions?
intern: no.
a few days later
intern: Hey I think i solved the problem, is this one solution right?
me: it's one way. It has some good stuff and bad stuff, but we want to try a few solutions to determine how to think about this.
intern: looks like a lost puppy but is it right?
Following conversation about multiple solutions and exploring solutions resembles "who's on first"
The biggest problem with standardized testing is there is no room for the idea that outside of school, it isn't always about doing the rote thing, the simple siloed task in front of you, but rather incorporating various bits of knowledge, about applying the bits of knowledge in ways that allow task completion for tasks that aren't extremely well defined with a pre-arranged solution.
In fact - the lack of a pre arranged solution is what defines most work outside of menial jobs. The idea that there is more than one approach or solution to something is antithetical to the core of standardized testing.
(keep in mind - that for the statistics to be meaningful, the tests can't allow for grading criterial other than "one strictly correct answer" or you end up with issues in the numbers as the result of graders being different.)
There's pretty strong evidence suggesting this isn't a problem. Or if it's a problem, it's not one that schools can solve.
Teaching "critical thinking" is basically a waste of time. You can't do it. It would be nice if you could, but you can't. "Critical thinking" simply doesn't transfer. (Well, they do a tiny bit, if they are done right, but there's more fine print than Facebook's ToS to any claim that you can teach students how to think.)
Let's say you took all those "creative thinking" skills you learnt in networking, did a course on photography, then got a job with a really good photographer. Guess what - you might have decent communication skills, but you'd still come off as a clueless idiot who can't "think creatively" or "solve problems", because you don't have the domain skills and knowledge.
If they've got a solid core of domain skills and knowledge, they can actually think for themselves. If they don't, they'll be clueless, and just try to memorise answers.
Anyone who can tie their own shoelaces knows "there's more than one way to solve a problem". Kids can actually think for themselves, if and only if they understand the domain.
Now, maybe the schools are teaching really badly, and the tests are geared towards forcing students to answer questions rather than solve problem - that's a problem. As in machine learning, getting students to memorise training data just leads to brittle learning. That might be the real problem - the blind are leading the blind, and some teacher who can't network is telling kids to memorise whatever was in the book, because no-one in the class has a clue. That's a recipe for incompetence.
And we know that high stakes tests with rewards for "good" teachers are like paying programmers per LoC. But that's not a problem with standardised tests anymore than code metrics are a problem. Idiots in management can cause issues, though.
I disagree completely with "you must already have domain knowledge to be able to apply basic learning skills within that domain". I've seen people enter new domains and do well, and other enter new domains and do poorly. The difference seems to be the ability to ask "how do the things I do already know interrelate?"
It is a matter of metacognition (thinking about what I know and how it applies) and not being paralyzed by fear of "getting the wrong answer". The former can be taught, and there are teaching methods that show success around the concept. The latter is something that is hard to overcome when people spend 16 formative years being punished when they don't "find the exact, single, and exclusive" answer and not being rewarded for "learning a few ways". (although research also shows that tests that are not binary - that is all points or no points - do a good job of helping with the fear e.g. multiple choice tests that have "wrong" answers that suggest conceptual understanding even if there is a calculation error.)
I don't think standardized testing has that much impact on how people think. I suppose test prep teaching is less likely to break people out of lazy thinking, but I don't think it inculcates it.
Which is sometimes true sure. But it is frustrating working with academic "stars" who internalize this once they come to the "real world". They are focused so much on getting the "right answer" within some narrowly defined context of right, that they can't see the better solution by reinterpreting the problem or recasting the assumptions in a slightly different order. They are unable to combine bits of knowledge from different buckets, because the test questions are all neatly siloed.
For example, I've had this argument with fresh grads many, many times:
me: you need to limit your UDP packets to 512 bytes (or 8K depending on the situation).
them: but my teachers told me UDP packet size is a 16 bit integer.
me: yeah, but many stacks cut off shorter, because there is a different standard that says routers can drop packets bigger than their preferred size, the only minimum is 512 bytes.
them: my teacher told me that the packet size is a 16 bit field. Why are you talking about routers?
me: because you need to combine information to actually solve a problem?
them: whatever, I need to figure out what the bug in my code is causing these packets to be dropped.
Or -
me: hey $intern, let's figure out a few ways to solve approach this problem. expounds on the problem, lays out a few things that might work. The goal here is to try a few different techniques so we can work them into the bigger design. Any questions?
intern: no.
a few days later
intern: Hey I think i solved the problem, is this one solution right?
me: it's one way. It has some good stuff and bad stuff, but we want to try a few solutions to determine how to think about this.
intern: looks like a lost puppy but is it right?
Following conversation about multiple solutions and exploring solutions resembles "who's on first"
The biggest problem with standardized testing is there is no room for the idea that outside of school, it isn't always about doing the rote thing, the simple siloed task in front of you, but rather incorporating various bits of knowledge, about applying the bits of knowledge in ways that allow task completion for tasks that aren't extremely well defined with a pre-arranged solution.
In fact - the lack of a pre arranged solution is what defines most work outside of menial jobs. The idea that there is more than one approach or solution to something is antithetical to the core of standardized testing.
(keep in mind - that for the statistics to be meaningful, the tests can't allow for grading criterial other than "one strictly correct answer" or you end up with issues in the numbers as the result of graders being different.)