Most don't. A fair comparison points out so many differences that it's unclear how the American kids we have (as opposed to the ones we'd like) would do under the system.
The testing history is also a bit skewed. Europe has a long history of gateway tests. You test to get into the right high-school-level program. You test to get into post-secondary. People don't call them "high stakes," but while they're not high-stakes for the schools they certainly are for the kids.
My host mother in one country yelled at her daughter--with her older brother joining in--that if she didn't study for her HS entrance exams she'd be trained in how to be a waitress.
Meanwhile, we have the SAT and ACT, which do essentially the same thing as college entrance exams. Nobody likes them.
My main gripe is the rise of standardized testing. NY has had the Regents' exam since forever. Most states haven't. MD instituted standardized testing when I was in high school, and it was in response to the upcoming wave of research showing "Johnny can't read." The test was simple and was designed to find the failing kids. In a mediocre class in a mediocre school, everybody passed. We could read English well enough. We could read maps. We could do arithmetic and fractions. It was an "essential" or "minimum" skills test. No problem with this. Use this kind of test to find, a few years before graduation, who really needs help to learn survival skills. Reading, arithmetic, fractions--those things most of us use almost daily.
Since then the "minimum" has increased. The State of Texas thinks that the photoelectric effect and the strong and weak nuclear forces are "essential knowledge." I find that amusing, except for the fact that if kids don't know enough of this kind of "essential knowledge" they don't graduate high school. Apart from the time when I tried to build a photocell given the raw materials for the heck of it (I was in high school, just don't ask) I've *never* needed to know anything about the PE effect. This is just wrong.
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