She'll be in my class someday...

While driving home from gettin my hair cut, I stopped to put gas in my car. As I waited to turn on to the main road, I observed a young girl in the backseat of a car point to balloons that flew above a sign advertising an open house down the street. The car was stopped at a red light.
The driver, the mother I assume, openned her door, hopped out, grabbed the balloons, and hopped back in just in time to catch the light as it turned green.

With the WASL (our state mandated test) starting on Monday, I thought about the lessons we learn that will never be found on a test. That child learned many lessons today. Stealing is okay as a long as nobody gets hurt. If YOU really want something, someone will give it to you. Her mother will do whatever she is asked. And, everything in life is easy.

These lessons will translate to her life in school. She will walk into my classroom as a ninth grader and, having forgotten her pencil, take one off my desk, forgetting to give it back at the end of class. She will forget to turn in a major assignment, and then five weeks later, at the end of the quarter, expect that I let her turn it in--for full credit. If I don't accept it, she will, on her lunch break the next period, use her cell-phone to call her mom, who will immediately call me demanding I treat her daughter with respect. And when I still don't budge, she will cry to her counselor that I am retaliating against her, treating her unfairly, and she feels intimidated in my class, therfore needing to switch to another teacher.

With such lessons available at home, or in public, what serious use is an exam to test the student's ability to think for themselves, analyze and solve problems, communicate in words their thoughts, or any other unecessary and stupid thing?