Can assessment technologies make standardized testing obsolete?

(Point or Counterpoint)
Today with faster technology injection into education, we can now afford to customize education, i.e. make learning an individualized experience for each student. Up until now, learning has been a linear process (first classroom instruction, followed by periodic summative assessment). But if we seek inspiration from Star Trek, we would want to move education towards a 1-on-1 teaching/learning system, where study pace and material are driven not only by the teaching mandate but also by each individual student's grasp, potential and interest. Now, with intelligent middle-ware technologies to support the teacher, it should be possible for the teacher to base his/her instruction on formative assessment inputs and offer actual personalized teaching, monitoring each students progress/performance and addressing specific doubts/weaknesses on the way, thus enriching learning for each student. This learning process is rather cyclic in nature where initial instruction is followed by formative assessment, and formative assessment feeds back to further guide instruction. Assuming each class of students has a normal IQ distribution, a hardworking teacher would want to see that every student (even the last one in class) score respectably above pass marks in a standardized test, but with limited bandwidth (read: fixed curriculum and bounded time to teach the entire class), the teacher may find it difficult. A middle-ware system conducting regular formative assessment for each student, would give the teacher a holistic view on every students strengths/weaknesses, so the Teacher could concentrate on the differential (filling specific learning gaps as they become apparent). Such a setup should lead to a more effective utilization of a Teacher's time and a more satisfied class of students, with hopefully no child left behind in class. Such new assessment technologies (teaching middle-ware) would make standardized tests, as we know them, obsolete. However it is noteworthy, that results emerging from system-driven assessment would be measurable and comparable. Actually standardized tests serve filter or sift the academically ahead from those behind, hence leaving detrimental effects on the psyches of those who find themselves in the latter lot, actually pushing them into a vicious cycle where they find themselves continuously lagging because they couldnt understand what they were taught last year or the year before etc. While, new assessment technologies not only sort/rank students by their academic brilliance but also focus on ways to help/push those left behind and, so, keep the class together. Teachers can create/share tests on various Learning Management Systems and have them systemcorrected to quickly get a view of how the class is performing. However, this can be taken a level further, where the student has access to a continuous assessment system that he/she can answer at his/her own pace/schedule, giving the teacher a broader/deeper view as to how each that individual and the class as a whole are progressing/performing. One such middle-ware technology is PSToM (available at www.pstom.com). PSToM (which stands for Parents, Students, Teachers of Mathematics) is a math learning/teaching system that promotes Algebra education, where students solve system generated problems, and get complete solutions for answers that go wrong and proceed to the next

problem type only on correctly answering the current one. Parents can view their wards progress/performance and teachers and peers can view every classeach students progress/performance with varying degrees of access and discuss student-fed problems that the systems solver couldnt solve.