I have a couple points here, first, I'd encourage some view this video of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, and maybe some others of his talks. I like a lot of what he has to say on the problems with education, and I wish I knew how to fix them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Most testing schemes particularly those for getting into college test a very narrow view of intelligence. And I think the current education system leaves far too many students out in the cold.
I think that technical schools are highly underrated and ignored.
Such an opportunity would have helped both my father and myself. My father was a pretty average student in school, but has a great aptitude for mechanics. He had wanted to go into the technical/vocational school in his hometown, but was too average, they reserved this school for the kids that were too "dumb" to pass regular high school, they figured it would be good to just get them ready for menial work. I've learned a lot from him mostly how to work around a problem, things they never teach you at school, and I still learn things from him every time I see him, but the standardized tests of this day would probably judge him far below average. When we neglect to recognize this type of talent as a society, we only hurt ourselves.
My stint was a bit later in life. I enjoyed FIRST very much in high school, and all I really knew going into college was that I liked building stuff like this. Everyone I knew friends, family, people from FIRST that I spoke with, all said the same thing: Engineering. I guess it could have worked out, but it wasn't a good fit for me. I excelled in lab work, but barely managed a passing grade on tests. It felt like high school allover for me. In lab I was finished with my work quickly scoring top marks and then I would spend the rest of class helping the other students figure out a relatively simple circuit. Later in the week test time showed up, and these same kids that barely understood the principles of parallel vs. series circuitry were kicking my butt on circuit analysis and what have you. It wasn't until I was almost 3 years struggling into a degree in engineering that I was falling behind on did I find what it is I really wanted to do: Machining. I've always enjoyed the actual process of making things and not so much the process of mathing out the blueprints. But no one even mentioned this to me, when I initially spoke to many of the people I spoke with as a high school student about my interest in machining I received a lot of scoffs.
In fact now that I've found what I'm motivated in, I get a lot more scoffs from people who feel I'm not living up to potential. I'm studying environmental science because I've always found it an interesting field that I never attacked before because I was steered towards math because I was "talented" at it. I bought a mini lathe and small milling machine and have been learning the basics of machining. I'm starting my own business building custom projects. At the moment I'm starting it off with designing and building vintage styled tube guitar amps.
So what's my point in all this? Well school has mostly failed me. The stuff I work the hardest on learning and improving(machining and valve circuitry) will get me no where on a standardized test. They don't care about what I've spent most of my mental capacity to learn and as such would score me much lower than someone interested in the things the tests test. Likewise the smartest mathematician likely wouldn't have the foggiest clue on to safely much less accurately operate any of my machines.(not that they can't just that their training/knowledge base doesn't prepare them for it)
I'll leave you with a piece of advise I received from a traveling musician I worked sound for a few years ago. He told me "I'd take one hard working person of average intelligence over a dozen lazy geniuses any day of the week."
Work hard and show your value at whatever you do, those who value what you value will recognize you for it.
I apologize this post is a little longer than I originally intended.