By aligning our educational institutions towards testing we created educational institutions that teach the test and not the rest.
Standardized testing is super important. I agree, though, it's a pretty poor proxy for how well schools are performing and who needs what... By way of example: schools with low-scoring test takers likely have environmental issues that impact school performance. The conclusion should likely be beefing up the budget and expanding the schools role to being more "community centers" full of social workers.
Poverty is a cycle, individual disruptive elements in school hurt all students, and that little 'war on drugs' has removed a lot of the support structure we expect in those families... Reducing the budget of schools with students in bad situations who can't test properly because their students are in bad situations and therefore can't test properly seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. A prophecy that happens to align very nicely with the ideology and stated goals of the group that pushed "no child left behind".
This is a great idea I would be fully in favor of. But we can't start having these types of conversations unless we know how schools are actually doing.
Focusing schools on testable performance leads to unintended consequences. My kids had heavy homework loads starting in first grade. They were still kids! and got robbed of much of the joy of childhood that should been afternoons playing at the playground and running around the neighborhood. All so the schools could pump up their test scores, by forcing their "customers" to carry the load.