I think that a standardized test is a formal formative assessment. It is formal because it is something that is planned in advance and the teachers and students are given plenty of time to prepare for the test. It is formative because it gives the teachers and school system feedback and ways that they could improve the curriculum or teaching methods.
An assessment can be reliable, but also have poor validity. A test can be reliable by giving you an idea of what the students are understanding and what they are not quite comprehending. At the same time, these tests might not have completely valid results. The results could have been skewed by many factors. Stress, biased test questions, or poor test construction in general are all factors that could contribute to the test results not being valid.
For the most part, standardized tests do tend to be standardized. I believe that every student is given the approximately the amount of preparation materials for the test. Each student is given the exact same test and the exact same time to finish the test. One group of people that the test might not be standardized for could be students that have disabilities. Their disabilities hinder the way that they are able to take test and sometimes prohibit them from taking a standardized test all together.
I completely agree with your last paragraph. If a student has ADHD he may not be able to focus on the class as well thus giving him a lower score and not accurately assessing his knowledge. I think it's hard for tests to be standardized though because there are so many factors that do play into affect that it's hard to put all factors into thought, but it should be done. They should compliment the students to the best of ability and allow students to really show their knowledge rather than be too stressed out to do so.
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