If you don't like testing, then come up with an alternative. Just letting the teachers go on the way they are is not an acceptable alternative.
When a system is failing year in and year out to produce what it promises and when it's only proposed fix is "give us more money," then the rubes putting up the money have the right, no, the duty, to question the experts who aren't delivering results. Testing is one obvious, maybe not the best, way to start trying to figure out what is broken.
And Education is broken in this country. As long as we keep shoveling money down the hole, the educators have no apparent interest in making the system any better, except to increase the number of teachers in the union and what they get paid. The teachers and the administrators ARE the problem.
I personally would shut down every public school, ban anyone who has taught there from being employed again as a teacher in the new system, and ban anyone with an education degree from being a teacher in the new system. Vouchers for everyone and let the chips fall where they may. There would be a few years of chaos and then we would have an education system that outperforms the current one at half the cost.
Ah, I see. So something that's demonstrably unhelpful must remain in place until I come up with the alternative?
How ... stupid. And how very like the educational problem you purport to want to fix.
The alternative is actually very straightforward.
First, require teachers to get a real college degree, rather than an "education" degree. Then require a teaching certificate, which would consist of an additional year of classes which comprise the small set of classes which are actually useful.
"Specialty" teachers can take additional classes, and get additional certification.
THEN ... get good curricula, the characteristics of which are known, because they've passed the test of time.
THEN -- and only then -- does "testing" make sense, but only as an instructional tool, and not some idiocy designed to promote "competition" between schools.