> Your idealistic answer seems to argue for changing the relevant topics. That's fine. That's an argument against the curriculum, not testing. All testing does is measure whether the curriculum is actually being taught.

A relevant curriculum is going to be different depending on what someone's interested in and what jobs are available - and what you measure and incentivise is what you get. Testing is not politically neutral.

There isn't anything wrong with testing, in principle, at some point you have to see whether someone can do the job. But the decision as to what to test, when, how... that influences what you're going to end up with. Just standardising the tests and running them often is a bad approach. That's what I'm saying.