This is not a recent article, but it's one that I find very satisfying, because Richard Phelps has taken the time to address some well-worn criticisms of standardized, high-stakes assessment.
On the effects of testing on women and minorities:
"There is a double sadness to the focus of some minority spokespersons on the messenger instead of the message. Black and Hispanic students in the United States generally receive an education inferior to that received by white students. This is a shame and a disgrace. By blaming standardized tests instead of the schools that are responsible for their students' poor achievement, however, these advocacy groups waste efforts that would be better expended reforming bad schools."
And on the general consensus that "everyone" disapproves of testing:
"I attempted to gather all relevant U.S. poll and survey items on student testing by collecting many surveys myself and searching the Roper Center archives. I discovered 200 items from seventy-five surveys over three decades...The results are fairly decisive. Majorities of the general public favor more testing and higher stakes in testing. The majorities have been large, often very large, and fairly consistent...Parents, students, employers, state education administrators, and even teachers (who exhibit more guarded opinions and sometimes fear being blamed if their students score badly on tests) consistently favor more student testing and higher stakes."
Richard also notes that when news reports are being produced about testing controversies, reporters seldom contact the test developers and psychometricians themselves; even when they do, many psychometricians are bound by confidentiality agreements and cannot address the issues with a reporter. The result is that these reports tend to feature only one side of the story - that given by critical parents/teachers and organizations such as Fairtest.