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Deborah, you are soooo right.

ANY form of single test is not a good thing.  Authentic assessment is much better.  Grade the student on everything! Class participation, homeork, presentations, boardwork, group work, solo work, projects, portfolios and do it all the time, contemporaneoulsy, for almost instant feedback for the student and the teacher (and parent(s)/legal guardians).

Of course this makes the teachers' jobs are much tougher.

And can we stop with the Multiple Choice (MC)-type questions?  Open-ended or (context sensistive) constructed responses provide much more feedback that potentially a guess in a MC  test.  Yes, the student is forced to create an answer on a blank piece of paper.   They are forced to recall facts and decode meaning from the involved question and formulate a cohesive response.  That is when we know they know.

Inclusion in a big class is also bad.  It's tough to differentiate your lesson for 38 students especially if you want an inquiry based class.  They are not all at the same level.  It's real tough.