Testing: smart or stupid?

Due to the testing this week and next week, I will come up with a verdict on its usefulness and practicality. 

First, it is important to note that most tests are designed for a lot of people, thus they are supposedly standardized.

Of course, the main goal of testing is to gauge students' ability/knowledge of something. There are many forms of testing, and some of them will be better in gauging ability than others by nature. For example, a driver's test result is probably pretty accurate whether someone can drive or not, while something like the SAT does not really indicate whether someone is a good reader/writer/mathematician. 

Tests like the SAT do not always promote better reading/writing/math skills, but instead promote learning how to take the SAT, if that makes sense. It rewards learning the format of the test, learning the types of questions that will show up, and taking the test over and over (collegeboard is a greedy monopoly, but that is a topic for another time). Someone who passes the driver's test will very likely be skilled enough to drive for real. On the other hand, someone with a high SAT score may not be smart, and conversely, being a skilled reader does not automatically mean you'll do good on the reading section. 

Furthermore, testing is usually very stressful. Many students end up cramming last minute for tests, and a week after, they don't remember a thing. In these cases, testing promotes simply memorizing information for test day, then letting go to create space for the next test. In school, tests are a thing to try to convince students to better learn the subject, yet does it matter if they just forget everything 3 days after the test?

Finally, my verdict..

Testing is not justified!!!

Better alternatives are projects and papers, where students can freely show their knowledge without conforming to an outline that skews the accuracy of the data.