High or Low Stakes Testing

We are having standardized testing this week in our schools statewide. The LEAP (Louisiana Examination and Assessment Program) Test. This test is to determine whether students in the 4th and 8th will be promoted to the next grade (fail and they don't move up) and for 10th and 11th graders it is mandatory to pass the tests in order to receive a high school diploma. I am much against such tests and very opinionated in denouncement (Hehe Get ready for my spiel) of them.
The passion for defining a student by a standardized test has grown in the U.S. in the past 15 years or so. It is in response to European and Asian passion for standardized testing, and is a way for politicians and schools to show with "number" the public "how our students are doing" in their task of learning.
But I have many objections to such testing and would like to see them eliminated completely. Why? (You asked?). Here are some of the reasons.
1) Such tests tend to emphasize memorization of facts or skills, to the exclusion of real life skills such as creative thinking, reasoning, and imagination,
2) I have seen our schools fall to a lower level of learning. Facts and memorization are taught. Teachers "teach the test" rather than teach students to think for themselves. Rigidity becomes the norm. I think a rigid education is usually a more shallow one.
3) Kids are defined by their scores. It's true that students who score well on these tests usually are well rounded. But many who do not score well are exceptionally talented in one or more areas, and that talent is not recognized by the exams. Often the kids who do poorly on the tests wind up with greater success in life than those high scorers.
4) They reward the lowest level of learning- memorization. Americans have always been a clever, if not the best informed people. this is because our open system of education encouraged such thinking.
But in recent years we have adopted the memorization/study regimes of Europe and Asia. As a result, American education has fallen downward. So I gritted my teeth when I ahd to administer the tests, never praised them and often remarked to students that I understand their anxiety about them and agree that the tests are not as meaningful as the adults who force them to take it profess it to be.
We had rallies at schools to cheer on students to score well, TV commercials informing the parents of the "importance of Leap Testing week", instruction in our schools has stopped for the entire week while the kids are tested, and anxiety and terror seem to be found in kids and parents who worry tat too many wrong answers on one test will deny them a promotion or graduation.
Somehow I think this all has little to do with the mission of schools. We should teach kids to be independent thinkers, give them opportunities to learn what is important to and for them, make school an enjoyable as well as working place, and show them that there are more ways to define the work of an individual than a mere test score. Sadly, our schools often do not do any of theses things anymore. Instead they "Leap" to success....at least as to how they define the term