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The best I could find quickly were articles/summaries like this:
http://www.higheredmorning.com/and-the-best-predictor-of-college-success-is
http://fairtest.org/sat-i-faulty-instrument-predicting-college-success

Mostly they refer to the combination of grades & course selection. My own personal biased unscientific interpretation of these results is, kids who take easy classes to get good grades in high school continue to take easy classes in college. Kids whose grades aren't as good because they push themselves with harder classes in high school continue to take harder classes in college.

Also, with regards to college admission:
http://www.usnews.com/mobile/blogs/the-college-admissions-insider/2011/3/14/qa-on-high-school-course-selections.html
"The answer depends on the level of selectivity at the colleges to which your son is applying. Most selective institutions—and all of the most highly selective colleges—expect students to move to the next logical level of rigor each year and to perform well in those courses. At less selective schools, his course selection will be less consequential to the admissions outcome."

We brought accountability to the UK school system a while back. Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else.

They do this here in the states as well with what they call proficiency testing. In ohio, if you don't pass certain ones, such as the 9th grade before your 12th grade year, you don't graduate high school. I remember there were weeks in school where all the teachers did was drum on about these worthless tests and telling us we needed to review for questions such as pointing where Washington DC was located. Thankfully, I had my Ti-86 to program on and kill time. On top of that, if you passed the test, there were weeks where you wouldn't have to show up to school until halfway through the day because they considered it "unfair" to those who didn't pass it to take it during non-school hours or to make up the work they missed.

Yeah, my school district sucked. Oh yeah, they also had computers that were running windows 2.1 and made in 1987 in 1997! This was also one of the top 10 largest districts in the state. You can pretty much gather I didn't learn anything about computers directly from pre-college public education

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked. But university professors get angry because they now have to teach science undergraduates maths that used to be taught in school).

Same here, many universities end up placing kids in pre 100 series classes just to bring them up to pace

Let me give you an example. In a graduate program that I used to be in, I was familiar with the adminissions process. The way it worked was that a certain number of slots were reserved for a particular minority group. Lets say there were X "regular slots" and Y "minority slots". We wanted people with high grades and high GRE scores. So, for the regular slots, we took the X people with the highest grades and GRE scores. For the minority slots, we took Y minorities who had the highest grades and GRE scores among the minority applicants. What this resulted in was that to be admitted to the program you had to have GRE scores and grades about 20% better if you were not a member of the minority group than if you were. This does not mean that grades or GRE scores are not pertinent to the selection of candidates.

The GRE doesn't fair any better in many of these comparisons.

ETS guidelines specify: "A cutoff score based solely on GRE scores should never be used as the sole criterion for denial of admissions." Yet one ETS study revealed that only 10% of schools adhere to these guidelines, with almost 30% of those surveyed indicating they use a cutoff score and 10% recommending use of a cutoff. ETS has done little to curb such misuses.

Why people continue to put any weight into these test scores is totally beyond me....

Let me give you an example. In a graduate program that I used to be in, I was familiar with the adminissions process. The way it worked was that a certain number of slots were reserved for a particular minority group. Lets say there were X "regular slots" and Y "minority slots". We wanted people with high grades and high GRE scores. So, for the regular slots, we took the X people with the highest grades and GRE scores. For the minority slots, we took Y minorities who had the highest grades and GRE scores among the minority applicants. What this resulted in was that to be admitted to the program you had to have GRE scores and grades about 20% better if you were not a member of the minority group than if you were. This does not mean that grades or GRE scores are not pertinent to the selection of candidates.

The GRE doesn't fair any better in many of these comparisons.

ETS guidelines specify: "A cutoff score based solely on GRE scores should never be used as the sole criterion for denial of admissions." Yet one ETS study revealed that only 10% of schools adhere to these guidelines, with almost 30% of those surveyed indicating they use a cutoff score and 10% recommending use of a cutoff. ETS has done little to curb such misuses.

Why people continue to put any weight into these test scores is totally beyond me....

Even more shockingly, computerized grading for essay tests is now being tested on several state tests.

You're assuming that human graders are actually doing a good job of scoring those essays. Are you sure?

The controversy over funding is just the tip of the iceburg wrt the NCLB.