What is the best theory for what intelligence is?

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

I'm sure you can appreciate why they exist though, they separate kids willing to put pencil to paper - who have their parents efforts and energies behind them, into a distinguishable pool of candidates for college entrance.  Those two things will go farther in our education system than "smarts" ever will.  Dollars spent yield tangible results.  Whereas you can dump money on a brilliant but unmotivated student whose parents really couldn't give less of a fuck to absolutely no avail.

Well, I don't really like the last part of what you wrote, because it doesn't seem very insightful about why people may or may not do school work. I do believe that there are cases where students are driven to work harder, which I guess is why there's such a high education score for Japan. (I know there's also a high rate of suicide in that country too.)