50 years after the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, a high-stakes testing movement, significantly boosted by provisions contained in No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, has emerged with the potential of both positive and negative implications. This paper argues that assessment generally is not tied to the 3 positive outcomes of urban, suburban, or rural schools--admission to college, military, and workforce entry--which are relevant to the private and public sectors, and to students and their parents. Benchmarking performance directly in relation to positive outcomes that matter is crucial if high-stakes testing, which ostensibly has as its purpose the improvement of overall system performance, is to be tied to all the desired outcomes that matter. (Contains 2 tables.)