Deborah Meier in the article “Beyond Testing: Seven Assessments of Students and Schools are more effective than Standardized Tests” elaborate the inadequacy of standardized tests to measure the educational accomplishments. She argues that policymakers use standardized tests, with high stake decisions tied to the scores, for the evaluation of students, teachers, and educational policies. Standardized tests can be understood as a sort of map to provide bird’s eye view for rationalizing educational policies. She further argues that unfortunately “accountability of schools” and “high stake standardized tests” are often confused in public imagination and test scores are often seen as the quality of education provided by the schools. The author identifies few disadvantages of high stake standardized tests these include; tests take key decisions away from schools; teaching to test result in narrowing of curriculum; tests results correlate with race and class differences hence creating inequalities; tests limit student responses who search for only one correct answer; and tests lack validity (do not show true picture) and reliability (do not provide same results if tests are repeated). Deborah argues that seven assessment tests are more effective and valid, these include; student self assessment; teacher observation of students and their works; the descriptive review process; reading and math interviews; portfolios and public defense of student work; school review by outside experts; and school boards and town meetings. The main focus of Deborah’s article revolves around the critical analysis of the disadvantages of high stake standardized tests and suitable alternatives to these tests. She argues that cherry-picked research materials support standardized tests. According to Deborah numbers are meaningless without descriptors and any rank ordering is deceptive including the idea of “pass/fail” that is based upon delusion and substantial measurement error. Author presents his stance by concretely backing it up with appropriate evidence. She refers to work of esteemed authors and even provide personal anecdote. For example, she quotes James C. Scott (1989) views about how policymakers “see” the world with reference to Scott’s book “Seeing Like a State”. Deborah also provide personal anecdote (Deborah’s adventure) in which she states that her skill at taking a test was related to her skill of how test maker saw the world. According to me it is an irrefutable reality that standardized tests have both pros and cons. There certainly needs to be a system that can evaluate educational progress of institutes, teachers and students, and hence guide policy markers to make adequate policies. For this purpose standardized tests are crucial. Moreover, the seven assessment alternatives suggested by Deborah have an important limitation, in that the alternative assessments cannot be implemented on a larger scale.