I'm not sure about the details of this stuff, but I do think I was among the last class to have the old system. In Texas you had to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which was stupendously easy every year. I never, from 3rd to 11th grade, got a score below commended (roughly equivalent to an A), and not that I'm complaining but it was primarily because it was painfully easy and the test material never evolved past like 9th grade level, even in 11th grade. And people take it so damn seriously, I actually exempted out of having to take an entrance exam at community college because of my TAKS scores, though I think my SAT score may have helped with that as well. The sad part is that I know that some people have failed TAKS.

I don't know a whole lot about the new system, other than there are a ton of individual tests. I don't know much about them other than they're harder than TAKS, though given that people actually managed to fail TAKS, I doubt that will last. I swear, since no child left behind, it seems that schools are less concerned about actually teaching people than they are about having good graduating rates, and how do they usually do that? By dumbing shit down. If what Juice said is true I'm kinda glad to hear it, but I still think that the very concept of schooling in American society is becoming more of a joke every year.