It's much worse than you think. I took the MCAT recently, a four section exam for medical school entrance. The CARS section (critical Analysis and Reasoning section) is honestly one of the easiest tests I've taken in my life. It's basically a functional literacy test. I used only about half the time for that section and got one point below a perfect score.
I thought just about everyone would find that section to be trivial, almost insulting, like the High School Exit Exam. I was so mistaken. I just tutored for the MCAT and it literally has me in an existential crisis right now. So many of them (including some from prestigious universities) were so dumb. Here is the type of thing I dealt with:
Why Abortion Should be Ended
Abortion should be made illegal because it undermines and devalues the sanctity of life...
... Although it is the case that an abortion may be a medical necessity in order to save the mother's life, these cases are exceedingly rare to the point of not being relevant to the discussion of abortion's legalization...
Question 1: What is the main point of this passage?
Student selects D and asks, "Why is this wrong?". I tell them that although they concede that point, it isn't the main point of the passage, and the author doesn't even think it's that important. "But the author agrees with it. Isn't it subjective to say which point is the main one? Am I just supposed to read the minds of the test creators to determine what they think is most important?"
Some of these people got accepted into med school...