Why do we do what we do?

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, and I have had many ideas go through my head for topics, but none seemed to inspire any real thoughts for now. Perhaps in the future they will, or perhaps they will go off to retire at the Shady Oaks of Random Thoughts retirement home.  Anyways, this past week has been our testing week at school. As always, this is a point of contention for teachers as we debate the merit of the tests, what is it proving, how responsible should teachers be, etc. But this is not a post about those tests. This is a post inspired by the testing days that led me to think of so many other things as well.
Why do we do what we do at schools? What are the motivating factors? Is it for the best interest of the students or is it the way we have always done things? Do we do it just to say we are doing it?
For me, I think it is the latter. We set up our testing days at our school with juniors through freshmen testing, seniors completing "community service" one day and college visits the other. On paper, this seems like a great plan, however the problem is in the execution. This is not well thought when put in action. We test the freshmen and sophomores just to say we tested them. They are told their scores, after their schedules for the next year are already determined. They do not analyze their scores or see what they need to improve on for their future. We do not discuss the tests in any form. So it begs the question, why are we testing them? If this was truly to help the students, we would analyze the results and compare the data and figure out how best to help these students. But, like so many things, we do it just to say we are doing it.
This is frustrating to me. It seems like a simple solution to help these students. We are spending thousands of dollars to have these tests scored by GAINS, and yet, we are not getting anything but test boredom out of the students.
Why is it that we can be doing things in a school that are good, yet they never reach the point of great? Why do we have meetings that are about changing schools, and yet no changes ever get made? Why don't we make the changes that we need? What are the roadblocks? In the world of education where decisions need to be made at the speed of light, can we afford to take light years to change?  How can we justify not doing anything when the livelihoods of our students are at stake?