(Edweek) by Debra Viadero.
Students spend an average of 10 days out of the school year taking district-mandated tests and nine days taking state-required tests, according to the Center on Education Policy. Over 12 years of schooling, that adds up to nearly four months of a young person’s life.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
That number does not include teacher-made tests, quizzes, final exams, many college-admissions tests and pretests; nor does it account for the amount of time teachers spend preparing students to take all those exams.
But the estimate, drawn from a nationwide 2015 survey of more than 3,000 teachers, provides a starting point for wrapping one’s mind around the amount of testing students actually do in schools. It also points to the high priority that educators and policymakers put on tests and the information they yield. While most of the teachers who responded to the center survey thought states and districts should cut back on the time students spend taking mandated tests, only a fraction of them wanted to dump those tests altogether.
