If I find that my smart , funny wife is not as smart and funny as some other woman , should I be unhappy in my marriage ? If this delicious steak is not as delicious as the steak I had last night , should I spit it out ? If all the teachers in my school are great , should it be closed down because some other school has greater ones ? And therein lies the problem with punishment through normreferencing . Bottom 5 % is meaningless without context . In many places the goal is to close public schools so they can be replaced by private charters . Since you can predict test scores via SES factors , it ' s also obvious that state governments can use test scores to pick and manipulate the political situation in the areas with the leastengaged and most timepoor adult populations . If people can ' t or don ' t participate in their local school board , government , etc , they ' ll be powerless to stop the closing of schools .