How to properly assess a student's knowledge of a subject Good afternoon,

Often times (in my experiences) tests questions are based upon irrelevant specific details that do not necessarily reflect a student's knowledge of the subject matter. For instance, I was once faced with a test on "The Once and Future King" that asked, "What was the name of the cow?"... I believe asking questions such as this does not accurately reflect a student's mastery of the subject.

In this light, are there any established best practices for formulating examinations that properly assess how well a student has grasped the concept of a subject?

P.S. - If you down-vote, please leave a reason so that I ask better questions in the future.

P.P.S. - I don't believe this question (singular) about examinations (specific) is too broad, since it has two very helpful (definitely adequate) answers with additional resources, which have been developed by Universities as best practices. These three qualities are what the 'too broad' hold explicitly asks the questioner to address. If, after these edits, Mods still think the question is too broad, please leave more feedback so that a better question can be formulated, or simply go ahead and close the thread. I think the two answers already given are adequate for anyone seeking an answer to this question.
I have found a couple of resources regarding the question of credibility of examinations.

The University of Michigan advocates that examinations should be:


Valid, (providing useful information about the concepts they were
designed to test)
Reliable (allowing consistent measurement and discriminating between
different levels of performance)
Recognizable  (instruction has prepared students for the assessment)
Realistic (concerning time and effort required to complete the
assignment)  (Svinicki, 1999)


For others' reference:

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/creatingexams.html

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/P8_0 &lt;- referenced UofM material above can be found here.

P.S. - The UofM website has further references, including the '(Svinicki, 1999)' that is listed above.