system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Most tests cannot accurately analyze a student's capabilities

I believe a student's capabilities should be judged depending on their ability to perform in a hypothetical future job. Also, I consider tests to be any type of written or oral evaluation in which one or more prompts have to be answered in a short time-span (less than 4 hours). This being said, these are the two main reasons why I believe most tests cannot accurately determine a student's capabilities:

> Time: in most jobs, the employee is usually given several days to complete his/her task. In tests, however, students are given a few hours, at most. I am aware that some professions such as doctors need rapid completion of tasks, but I believe that only a small number of jobs have this issue.

>Memory: most tests require you to learn an extensive amount of facts by memory only when, during a real job, you would have time and resources to search for such information on the internet. In some cases, all you need to get a %100 is just a really good memory.

To conclude, I believe tests should be replaced by assignments, oral presentations or written essays as these are much more similar to most jobs than tests are.
gpt
Tests are structured the way they are to measure a students ability to complete a task in timed and monitored environment. The tasks are usually close form and very straightforward to demonstrate the knowledge you were expected to learn. They are not perfect but they do serve a purpose.  Without a test, it is near impossible to individually measure the level of learning obtained by a specific individual student. 

After all, how else do you quantify whether a specific student has met the desired goals for the course? Realize, this does explicitly require it to be monitored to ensure it is the student in question doing the work. 

The problem with essays, assignments and the like are they are not monitored to assure the student in question is actually doing the work. It is quite possible to 'game' the system. In the end, the completion of the course successfully denotes a minimum level of mastery for a subject. If you could not verify the student in question actually achieved this, your completion begins to lose meaning.

Most school work does not reflect the types of tasks you will do 'at work'. I'd also argue that your perception of what is required at work is also flawed. A single task like the 'exam' would not be given days to do. If it is considered fundamental knowledge, you would be expected to apply it. You don't learn algebra to do algebra problems. You learn it to use it as a tool to solve real world problems. Your school education is designed to provide a foundation to pull from to do actual work tasks. The better the foundation, the faster/better you will be able to do a job later. If your foundation is not good enough, you will not last in some jobs.