Creativity vs. Assessment

On the theme of assessment, what information is the data really giving us about our students? We know that students do not put forth their best effort on them as hard as we try. Honestly, are we putting our best effort forth? Summative assessment does not correlate with the middle school beliefs at all, the students have no control over what they are learning in preparing for these tests, and they rate very low on Bloom's taxonomy. I agree that there needs to be some consistency among schools and their curriculum, but this is not the way to do it. There is so much information that students learn that they will never be tested on but is far more influential to their learning. We need to take a look at our priorities. This generation of students who are getting over tested is losing precious creatvity. The developmental stage they are at has already lost some of their childhood imagination and creativity, why are we pushing more of it out?