This! In the Real World, you don't have to memorize complex facts - you can let Google/Bing/whatever find it for you. What's important to know is HOW to APPLY that knowledge and TRANSFORM it to match your current situation. Example: I may have 15 years programming experience, but I still go to google to remind myself how to do foreach() in jquery ($.each(array, function(idx,obj)) for those interested) because I just don't do that on a daily basis. Not even quite weekly (although that's changing). If someone came to me and said I need to figure out the area of this 4-pointed but not rectangular shape, I'd go online to find out what info I need and how to calculate it, then probably pop into Excel/OO/LO/whatever to start doing some calculations (I'd use that so I can also show my work in case I did it wrong - which would be likely the first time). Sure, I'm sure I learned this in 10th grade trig or 9th grade geometry, but I haven't used it since then so the skill is long gone.
That said, politicians, most parents and some teachers LOVE TESTING. It makes them feel good when simple, easy to understand numbers go up and down. It's not like THEY should have to pass a test to understand how education's working, but it's ok to do that to teenagers who are ... easily distracted.